The Navigator summary
A care navigator is the person who helps you coordinate care across all the moving parts — providers, therapies, evaluations, equipment, benefits, and the appointments that never seem to line up on their own. You might have one through your insurance, a hospital or clinic, a nonprofit, or a state program. Some families have a case manager, a care coordinator, or a social worker filling the same role. Whatever the title, this is the person trying to help you carry the coordination load, and they can only help with what they can see.
That is what the Navigator summary is for. It pulls together the bigger picture of your loved one's care into one document you can hand over — so the navigator starts with context instead of starting from scratch.
You reach it from Main Menu → Caregiver → Navigator summary. (The exact row may be visibility-gated depending on which sections are turned on for the active profile — look for Navigator summary in the Caregiver hub.)
What it gathers
A Navigator summary is a document you put together from your own saved records to share with a care navigator — a coordinator, clinician, or case manager helping your family. It is your notes, not instructions from CareHaven, and it includes only what you choose to add.
Included by default, the summary brings together things you already keep in CareHaven:
- Your goals — your active goals for the person you care for, what you are working toward and advocating for, drawn from Advocacy & goals.
- Open to-dos — care follow-ups you haven't cleared yet.
- Decisions you've logged — the titles and revisit dates of decisions in your Decision Log.
- Appointments — upcoming appointment titles and times, covering the next 14 days.
Everything in the default summary is text you entered yourself — your goals, your to-do titles, your decision titles, your appointment names. CareHaven never adds clinical language or instructions of its own.
Optional sections (off by default). Before sharing, you can turn on additional sections using the toggles in the summary sheet. These stay off until you opt in, because they can be more sensitive:
- Decision details — what you weighed, who you consulted, and any notes you added to a logged decision.
- Recent life changes — active life changes you've recorded (off by default because this is free text that may be sensitive).
- Medications — medication names and dosages from your med supply list.
- Diagnoses — diagnoses listed on the person's profile.
- Advance directives — code status, proxy name and phone, and whether a POLST or DNR is on file.
- Diet & swallowing — texture level and liquid consistency from the diet order.
These also pull in coordination context a navigator actually needs — services in motion, the providers involved, and what you are trying to line up next, including anything from Services & eligibility.
You decide what goes in. If a section feels like more than you want to share with a particular navigator, leave it out. You opt in to anything personal before it ever lands in the document. Available
How to share it
- Open the Caregiver hub and tap Navigator summary.
- Review the preview — what you see is exactly what will be shared.
- Turn any optional sections on or off using the toggles.
- Tap Share as PDF or Share as text and pick how you want to send it — email, Messages, AirDrop, and so on.
You initiate every share. The summary is never sent automatically, and nothing leaves your device until you tap Share and confirm in the iOS share sheet.
How it differs from the Handoff
It is easy to confuse this with The Handoff packet, so here is the clear line between them.
The Handoff is for someone covering for a few hours — a sitter, a grandparent, a respite worker. It briefs them on today: the rhythm of the day, the cues to watch for, current medications, and what to do in an emergency. It answers "what do I need to know to keep things steady while you step away this afternoon?" If you are preparing one of those, see Create a handoff for a sitter.
The Navigator summary is for someone helping you coordinate care over the longer arc. It is not about getting through the next few hours — it is about goals, decisions, and the services you are trying to weave together over weeks and months. It answers "what is the bigger picture, and where do we go from here?"
Different audience, different time horizon, different contents. One steadies the day. The other moves the plan forward. Keeping them separate means each person gets exactly what they need, without a sitter wading through benefits paperwork or a navigator hunting for today's nap schedule.
Private by design
The Navigator summary is generated right on your device, by you, from data you already keep in CareHaven. Nothing is sent anywhere automatically. There is no account on the other end, no upload, no sharing that happens behind your back.
You create the document deliberately and then share it deliberately — the same way you would hand someone a PDF or a printed page. You stay in control of when it is made, what it includes, and who receives it. When you are done, it goes to the navigator on your terms and nobody else's. For the full picture of how CareHaven protects what you record, see Privacy & security, and for the other ways you can export and share what you track, see Sharing & reports.
Coordinating care across providers and programs is a heavy job, and most of it has been landing on you. A good navigator can carry part of that — but only once they understand where you are headed and what you have already decided. The Navigator summary hands them that understanding in one place, so the help you get is help that actually fits your family.