Disclaimer: This content is for education only and is not medical advice. Providers should use clinical judgment and tailor plans to individual patients.
We wanted to cover one topic today that’s been on our minds at BodySite for a while: the upgrade to care plans and programs—and how we see where these fit into your care and treatment.
We’re not clinicians, but we do have a worldview that’s been adopted by thousands of practitioners, and we want to demonstrate how that works in the platform.
Most of you know me and Katrina already. I’m a serial medical software entrepreneur, and BodySite is a passion project because our goal is to help patients get to better outcomes by empowering providers with tools that support real change. I’ve been doing this for about 25 years.
Katrina’s been with me for about eight years. She knows the platform better than I do most days, and she’s your go-to expert for the nitty-gritty of functionality.
Our goal is to change the way healthcare happens. If you’re on this webinar today, you probably already see things this way—but we like to reiterate why we’re covering it the way we are, and why we’re different than a traditional EMR.
Many EMRs focus intensively on the chart of clinical encounters. But there’s something beyond the chart that’s often missed by both the practitioner and the software: what’s happening between visits. We believe that matters more than the visit itself—and it’s usually where lifestyle change actually happens.
It all starts with a plan. In most EMRs, the plan is the “P” in the SOAP note. We want to expand thinking beyond that, because that plan is usually a limited view of what happens next. It’s parked in the encounter note, and unless you share it with the patient, they’re often left wondering what to do with it.
Today we’ll do a live walkthrough of how you can create more detailed, patient-facing care plans from that “P” in the SOAP note—then layer on programs and courses that help the patient actually get where you’re trying to take them.
There’s nothing wrong with charting, obviously. The issue is that the chart is not the care, and it doesn’t create outcomes. It records what happens at each encounter. We want to move the needle between encounters.
We think of care plans as multilayered. It usually starts with the patient’s question: “What do I do now?” Then it becomes: “How do I sustain this for long-term health?”
Our simple plan in BodySite expands on the “P” in your SOAP note: immediate, situational instructions—what to do today, this minute, and until you tell them to do otherwise. Then there’s the program or course—something most platforms don’t really offer—which can include resource libraries, self-paced lesson courses, and sequential education in the form of drip courses, plus tracking, monitoring, and journaling.
We’re not all doing GLP-1s, but I wanted to mention a stat I found while researching for this webinar: when people stop weight-loss medications, many regain weight quickly—sometimes most or all of it within 18–24 months—unless they have a long-term maintenance strategy. That’s where lifestyle maintenance plans matter, and that’s been a core focus for BodySite for almost 15 years.
We know it’s hard. Patients can’t always do it. There are many factors. I covered some of this in my article “A Tale of Two Practices,” and I’d love your feedback on it.
Today’s agenda: moving from the assessment to an actual care plan, layering on courses/programs in the patient record, understanding the types of programs you can use in BodySite, and how to create/edit each type. Then we’ll do a live build of each with Katrina’s help. Katrina will also share shortcuts and tips, because we know you have limited time—but we want to show it’s not only necessary, it can be fast.
Microphones are muted to keep the flow moving. Please post questions in chat—we’ll do Q&A at the end, and Katrina will also watch the chat and pull us into relevant detours as needed.
We’ll start with a realistic workflow. I’m on the home page of my practitioner account, and I’ve stacked the deck with an appointment from yesterday where I met with a fictitious patient, Mary Smith.
Mary comes in for a consultation. Through assessment, labs, and discussion, we conclude she may have insulin resistance. She’s overweight, and we want to address those issues.
In the encounter note, we have a SOAP note describing a 45-year-old female with gradual weight gain, low energy, and elevated BMI. The assessment includes insulin resistance and risk for cardiometabolic issues.
In many workflows, the next step ends at “diet, activity, sleep, stress,” and maybe GLP-1 therapy. That can be appropriate—but what’s usually missing is practical, expanded guidance the patient can follow day to day.
So we go to the patient’s Care Plans and Programs page and decide how to support Mary. We start with a blank slate—other than the SOAP note—and we ask: “What’s the plan?”
From there, you can type instructions directly, or you can use tools like ChatGPT to draft a patient-friendly care plan and paste it into the care plan builder. You may already have your own advice—this is simply a fast starting point.
Another approach is to take the output and store it as a reusable Note in your content library. That way, in the patient record you can click Add Content, choose Note, and drop that pre-built care plan into the patient’s page instantly.
Once saved, Mary can log in and immediately see the plan: the “refrigerator Post-it note” that lives on her home page—clear steps she can follow until you modify the plan.
The care plan is evergreen and editable. You can change it any time—remove a video after a week, update text after a follow-up, add new instructions—and the patient sees the updates in real time.
It’s important to clarify: the care plan is not a drip course. It doesn’t change every day. It’s static and persistent until you revise it—while a drip program delivers structured content over time.
A nice touch is adding a supporting resource, like a YouTube video from a trusted source (for example, Cleveland Clinic on insulin resistance). You can add it directly with the Add Content button and even drag it to the top so it’s the first thing the patient sees.
From there, you can layer on deeper education by assigning a program. In our example, we add a Mediterranean Diet drip program, and potentially an exercise plan—or you can add an evergreen exercise resource library instead of a structured daily course.
Now Mary has a multi-layer plan: the simple care plan plus one or more programs. A drip program can email content daily and include tasks the patient completes. Some tasks can even be auto-completed based on tracked data entries (like weight).
Next, we step away from Mary’s record and go into Content → Plans & Programs. This is where your template library and your personal “bookshelf” live. You can preview a template and use Copy & Edit to bring it into your own library.
In BodySite, there are three program types with different behaviors: (1) drip courses (calendar-based daily/weekly/monthly delivery), (2) self-paced courses (lesson-based, organized into modules), and (3) resource libraries (folders of evergreen content).
Resource libraries are useful when you want patients to have access to collections—recipe libraries, videos, medication instructions, or optional “depth” resources—without drip pacing. They’re also great to use in conjunction with other programs so you don’t duplicate the same resources everywhere.
Creating a resource library is simple: create folders (e.g., Beginner / Intermediate / Advanced exercises), then use Add Content to fill each folder with exercises, videos, documents, notes—whatever you want.
A helpful shortcut: you can import resource folders from other programs. If you already built a strong folder somewhere else, you don’t have to rebuild it—just import it into the new program.
Drip courses are the classic calendar sequence. You can add one day, seven days, 28 days, and build day-by-day using the same Add Content workflow. If your day is going to be repeated, build day one first, then copy it 30 times instead of building 30 days from scratch.
You can also copy a single object (like a task or footer note) across multiple plan days—every day, every seven days, or specific days. Copied objects are appended to the bottom of the day by default, so you may want to reorder after copying.
Self-paced courses are the newest structure: you create modules, then lessons within modules. Each lesson is a stack of objects—videos, notes, PDFs, tasks, etc.—and the patient completes lessons at their own pace. This is ideal when daily drip would feel overwhelming.
You can use ChatGPT to generate an outline for modules and lessons, then quickly build the structure in BodySite, and later fill in each lesson with content.
Across every builder—care plans, drip days, lessons, and resource folders—the methodology is consistent: you’re stacking reusable objects from your content libraries using the Add Content button.
Katrina shared a few building tips: copying multiple plan days, copying a single object across days, and importing days from another program to merge plans. In the day editor, you can add text, photos, exercises, recipes, documents, notes, videos, tasks, forms, and surveys. If you have Fullscript enabled, you can also add protocols that trigger supplement recommendations.
We also discussed the AI button inside the editor. It’s available for accounts that have it enabled, and we plan to upgrade it. For now, ChatGPT externally is often more powerful—especially when you’re careful not to include PHI.
One question was about self-paced courses in the mobile app. At the time of this recording, self-paced courses are available on the web experience, with app support coming in a near-term update as part of a larger redesign and improvements.
Another question: sharing programs with colleagues. If plan sharing is enabled for your account, you can share a program from the program’s menu by entering the recipient’s email address. Shared programs are not editable by the recipient (they receive a copy in a non-editable format).
If you have topics you want us to cover in a future session—charting, scheduling, billing, booking, or deeper dives into plans/programs—send them in. We’ll use that to shape the next office hours.
