Incident Reports

Part of the Anaya Care Handbook — the source of truth for how the product must behave. When the product needs to change, change this document first, then make the system match it.

What this covers

This page governs incident reports: after-the-fact accounts — a fall, a medication error, an injury — that a care provider files against a client from the mobile app; management reviews and resolves them on the web dashboard and can share them with the client's family. The platform's other safety feature, the real-time SOS panic action, has its own page: Emergency Alerts (SOS).

Incident reports capture unexpected one-time events. They are distinct from Change of Condition records, which track ongoing health changes over time.

Key terms

• Incident report — A written account of something that went wrong involving a client (fall, medication error, injury, behavioral incident, skin issue, choking, or medical emergency), filed by a care provider.
• Incident type — The category a report must declare: fall, medication error, injury, behavioral incident, skin integrity issue, choking, or medical emergency.
• Severity — How serious an incident is: low, moderate, high, or critical. It is suggested during filing and drives who is notified and what follow-up fires.
• Mandatory Report — A dedicated option inside the filing flow for suspected abuse, neglect, or exploitation, which surfaces the state-specific reporting contacts and notifies the care manager and Owner/Admin immediately.
• Acknowledgement — A care manager confirming they have seen a submitted incident; if it is not acknowledged in time, the alert escalates to the Owner/Admin.
• Edit window — The 30 minutes after filing during which the reporter may still correct their report.
• Review — A manager's examination of a submitted report, with optional notes.
• Resolution — The final closing of a report, with notes on the outcome.
• Share with family — A one-time, one-way action that makes a report known to the client's family representatives.
• Handover note — An automatically suggested briefing for the next care provider on shift, which can be generated from a serious incident.

How it works

Incident report lifecycle

A care provider files a report from the mobile app against a specific client. The report states the incident type, when it happened, and a description (at least ten characters), and may include photos. It starts in Submitted.

Management reviews reports on the web dashboard. A manager can move a report to Under review (recording who reviewed it, when, and any notes) or close it as Resolved (recording who resolved it, when, and the resolution notes). A minor report may be resolved directly from Submitted without a separate review step. Once resolved, a report is final.

The reporter may correct their own report for 30 minutes after filing; after that it is locked. At any point, management can share the report with the client's family representatives — a one-time action that cannot be undone.

When a report is filed, the system may also judge that the next care provider needs to know about it and prepare a handover note for them to acknowledge at the start of their next shift (see Scheduling & Shifts).

AI-assisted filing and severity

The filing flow is meant to be guided. The care provider starts with a free-text account of what happened; from that, the system presents structured incident-type options to confirm rather than asking them to pick a type cold. It also suggests a severity — low, moderate, high, or critical — which the care provider can accept or override. When preparing a new report, the system flags patterns from the client's prior incidents (for example, repeated falls) so everyone sees the report in context.

For suspected abuse, neglect, or exploitation, the flow offers a dedicated Mandatory Report option. Choosing it surfaces the state-specific reporting contacts inside the platform and immediately notifies both the responsible care manager and the agency's Owner/Admin.

Severity drives what happens next. A high or critical incident automatically flags the client for a care-plan review. Every incident is retained permanently in the client's profile history and is never deleted.

Acknowledgement and shift close-out

A care manager is expected to acknowledge each submitted incident. If they do not acknowledge it within the configured timeframe, the alert escalates to the agency's Owner/Admin. Separately, when a care provider tries to close a shift while a high-severity incident for that client is still unresolved, the app warns them and requires explicit confirmation that the incident has been addressed before the shift can close (see Scheduling & Shifts).

Incident notifications

• On filing: every management user who can view all incident reports is notified immediately, at high priority. This notification cannot be turned off. The reporter is not notified of their own filing. The responsible care manager also receives an immediate push on submission.
• On filing, by severity: when a report is moderate, high, or critical, the client's active representatives are notified automatically — they do not have to wait for a manager to share the report.
• On review or resolution: the same management group plus the original reporter are notified. Individuals may turn these off.
• On sharing with family: the client's active family representatives are notified, at high priority. This notification cannot be turned off.

Delivery follows the platform's standard notification channels (see Communication). Every time someone opens a report, that access is recorded in the audit trail, because incident reports contain health information.

Rules

1. INC-1 — Only a care provider (or another user granted incident-reporting permission) can file an incident report, and only from the mobile app, against a specific client of their agency.
2. INC-2 — Every incident report must state an incident type (fall, medication error, injury, behavioral incident, skin integrity issue, choking, or medical emergency), the date and time it occurred, and a description of at least ten characters. Photos may be attached.
3. INC-3 — Every incident report belongs to exactly one agency and one client. Users of one agency can never see another agency's reports.
4. INC-4 — A new report always starts in Submitted status.
5. INC-5 — Only the original reporter can edit a report, and only within 30 minutes of filing. After the edit window closes, the report content is locked for everyone.
6. INC-6 — Only the original reporter can add photo attachments, and only within the same 30-minute edit window. Attachments must be protected like all other client health information — never publicly accessible.
7. INC-7 — A report can only move forward: Submitted → Under review → Resolved, or Submitted → Resolved directly. A resolved report can never be reopened or changed.
8. INC-8 — Every review and every resolution must record who did it, when, and the notes they entered.
9. INC-9 — Sharing a report with the family can happen only once per report, can never be undone, and must notify the client's active family representatives.
10. INC-10 — Once a report is shared with the family, the client's family representatives must be able to view it. Reports that have not been shared are never visible to the family.
11. INC-11 — Filing a report must immediately notify, at high priority, every management user who can view all incident reports — except the reporter. This notification cannot be disabled by the recipient.
12. INC-12 — Review and resolution must notify the same management group plus the original reporter. Recipients may turn these notifications off individually.
13. INC-13 — Report visibility must honor each user's permission scope: "view all" sees every report in the agency, "view assigned" sees reports for clients the user is assigned to, and "view own" sees only reports the user filed.
14. INC-14 — A care provider who can file reports for a client must also be able to see the reports they filed for that client.
15. INC-15 — Every viewing of an incident report must be recorded in the audit trail as health-information access; filing, review, and resolution must each be recorded in the activity log.

Note: Rules INC-16 – INC-22 were retired and live on as SOS-1 – SOS-7 on Emergency Alerts (SOS). IDs are never reused.

16. INC-23 — The filing flow must read the care provider's initial free-text description and present structured incident-type options for them to confirm, rather than asking them to pick a type cold. (🚧 Spec only)
17. INC-24 — Every report must carry a severity of low, moderate, high, or critical. The flow must suggest a severity that the care provider can accept or override, and the chosen severity must drive who gets notified and what follow-up fires. (🚧 Spec only)
18. INC-25 — When preparing a new report, the system must flag patterns based on the client's prior incidents (for example, repeated falls) so the care provider and managers can see the report in context, and it must keep tracking these patterns over time. (🚧 Spec only)
19. INC-26 — Filing a report must immediately send the responsible care manager a push notification on submission. (🚧 Spec only)
20. INC-27 — When a report's severity is moderate, high, or critical, the client's active representatives must be notified automatically, without waiting for a manager to share it. (🚧 Spec only)
21. INC-28 — A report with high or critical severity must automatically flag the client for a care-plan review. (🚧 Spec only)
22. INC-29 — Every incident report must be retained permanently in the client's profile history and must never be deleted. (🚧 Spec only)
23. INC-30 — The filing flow must offer a Mandatory Report option for suspected abuse, neglect, or exploitation. Choosing it must surface the state-specific reporting contacts inside the platform and must immediately notify both the responsible care manager and the agency's Owner/Admin. (🚧 Spec only)
24. INC-31 — A care manager must acknowledge each incident, and if they do not acknowledge it within the configured timeframe, the system must escalate the alert to the agency's Owner/Admin. (🚧 Spec only)
25. INC-32 — When a care provider tries to close a shift while a high-severity incident for that client is still unresolved, the app must warn them and require explicit confirmation that the incident has been addressed before the shift can be closed (see Scheduling & Shifts). (🚧 Spec only)
26. INC-33 — Incident reports cover unexpected one-time events and must remain distinct from Change of Condition records, which track ongoing health changes. (🚧 Spec only)

Who can do what

Decisions needed

• Should office staff be able to file incident reports from the web dashboard? A web "incident report form" page exists as an empty placeholder. Options: build web filing for managers; keep filing mobile-only by the care provider who witnessed the event.
• Should anyone be able to correct or remove a report after the 30-minute window? Today nobody can — not even an admin — and there is no delete. Note that INC-29 now requires permanent retention, so any future correction path must keep the full history rather than overwrite. Options: allow admin corrections with a visible change history; keep reports strictly append-only.
• What exactly should the family see when a report is shared or auto-notified? With INC-27 notifying representatives automatically on moderate/high/critical severity, the question of what they can then view sharpens. Options: the full report including photos and notes; a summary without internal review notes.
• What is the acknowledgement timeframe before escalation, and is it configurable? INC-31 requires escalation to the Owner/Admin when a care manager does not acknowledge in time, but the exact window (and whether each agency sets its own) is not yet decided. Options: a fixed platform default; a per-agency configurable timeframe.
• Should an unresolved high-severity incident hard-block closing a shift, or only warn? INC-32 requires a warning with explicit confirmation. Options: keep the warn-and-confirm behavior; escalate to a hard block until the incident is resolved.