The hospital sends a person home.
We help you send a family in after them. Discharge day ends with a folder of papers, a car ride, and a family suddenly on shift with no tools. This page is about a program that changes that, free to your family, paid for by the health system that sent your person home. It exists so that the plan of care in that folder becomes a week that actually runs: walks with people attached, and supplies you can afford. Nobody carries it alone.
The idea, in one picture
Her house in the middle. Family and neighbors around it. What travels between the houses is invitations and agreements. No one's whole calendar travels. Her records move only when she says so.
What you get handed today
If you've lived a discharge day, you know the folder. The summary in clinical language. The medication list with two pills that look alike. A number to call for the follow-up. A line that says she should walk daily and eat more protein. Everyone at the hospital meant every word of it.
Then the doors close, and the questions start in the car. Who takes Tuesday? What do the new pills look like next to the old ones? Can she walk to the mailbox alone? Who's buying the supplies, and with what? The plan of care is real. A plan with no names, no calendar, and no money attached is still homework.
The story, with made-up people
Teresa, 78, goes home on a Thursday after a hip replacement. Her daughter Ana lives twenty minutes away. Her son Miguel is in another state. Gloria lives two doors down and has known Teresa for thirty years. An aide comes Tuesdays.
By Sunday night, this is what activated looks like: Teresa's discharge papers and medication list live in her archive, which she owns. Ana can see the week's calendar; Miguel can see it from out of state; the aide can write a note into the care log; each person sees only their part. The walking plan from the folder became actual walks: Ana on Mondays, Gloria on Wednesdays, Miguel by phone on Sundays while they each walk their own street. The follow-up visit is booked, with a ride, and a one-page brief will go along so nobody has to retell the story from memory. And the first supply run (the one nobody warns you costs like a car payment) got split four ways with two other households on the block.
The seven moves of the first week
The papers go into her archive. Discharge summary, plan of care, the medication list, with look-alike pills flagged so 10pm-you doesn't have to squint. The archive is hers and stays hers.
The circle forms. Each person gets exactly the view they need: the calendar for the out-of-town son, write-a-note for the aide, the full picture only where Teresa says so. Every access asks, and every access is written down.
The plan of care becomes the week's plan. Who does what, which day, warning signs on one page in kitchen language, and in the language your family actually speaks at the table.
Every walk gets a person attached. "She should walk daily" becomes Ana-Monday, Gloria-Wednesday, Miguel-by-phone-Sunday. Invitations travel between houses. Each house keeps its own calendar.
The supplies get affordable. Adult diapers, wound dressings, nutrition drinks: the family and the neighbors already helping split the bulk run, to the cent. Nobody takes a cut.
The caregiver gets watched too. The tools track Ana's load alongside Teresa's recovery. When Tuesdays overflow, they suggest who else can take one, before Ana breaks.
The story travels to the follow-up. One page: what happened, what she takes, what changed, what worries the family. Handed to the clinician at the visit.
Walks with the neighbors, without opening anyone's life
The scheduling piece works the way neighbors already work: somebody asks, somebody answers. Gloria's phone gets "Wednesday at 10, a walk with Teresa?" and answers yes or offers 11. Nobody sees Gloria's calendar, Gloria never sees Teresa's, and the plan still lands on both. There's a whole page about how that works: making plans together, in plain words — because we built it before we wrote this.
Splitting the supply run
adult briefs, case ×2
wound dressings, box
nutrition drinks, 24
split: 4 households
Recovery has a shopping list nobody mentions at discharge. Buying those supplies alone, at retail and in a hurry, is expensive. A buying circle among the households already helping splits bulk prices with visible math, a shared receipt, and no percentage fee. How to start one: the how-to page · the idea itself: buying together, in plain words.
The person doing the caring is not a renewable resource
Every part of this program treats the caregiver as a user in her own right. Her hours get counted. Her interrupted nights get noticed. When the load climbs, the system's suggestion is "here are the people in the circle who could take Wednesday." Respite gets proposed before the breaking point, because after is too late and we have all watched after.
What this costs your family — and what "free" means here
Free to the family. Paid for by a sponsor. Building this costs real money, and we say so. A sponsor (usually the health system whose patient is going home) funds these capabilities the way you'd fund a public park.
Once funded, they belong to everyone, forever. That's written into our charter: no sponsor gets exclusivity, nothing here is paywalled later, no ads ever run, and your information is never sold. It never even leaves your family's hands.
Why would a hospital pay for this? Fewer bounce-backs, kept follow-ups, and families that don't collapse, which is what their mission statement says they want anyway. There's a page for them, in their language.
Where this stands
The program is proposed. It has not started running. We are inviting the first health system to sponsor it now. This page exists so families, and the people who run hospitals, can see the same picture.
The pieces are further along than the program. The archive, the consent gate that makes "every access asks" true, the plans-together tool, the buying circles: real, with their own pages. What is built, what is a prototype on invented data, and what is still designed lives on one dated page: the build log, updated every time reality changes.
You can start now. The tools are live today, free, with no account: an Action Plan, a guide to gathering records with a fallback request letter, a one-page handoff brief, and a starter archive kit — Start today, on the main site. A binder and a Sunday afternoon is a real version of this program. It's how it was invented.
How to help, and how to tell us something's wrong
You run a health system, a plan, or a foundation? Read the sponsor page, then Write to us → "interest" on the main site. The first sponsor shapes the program with us.
You're in the middle of a discharge week right now? Start with the paper tools above — today. They were built from a real family's real weeks.
See a problem, or something that worries you? Write to us → "feedback" on the main site; good-faith security research is welcomed and protected by our Terms, §15.