Your words

Client, patient or participant — your words: Corella speaks your organisation's language, not ours.

Every sector has its own word, and in each one it is the word. A community nursing service says patient. An NDIS provider says participant, because that is the scheme's own word. Supported accommodation says resident, aged care says care recipient, and a peer-support service may say consumer on purpose. There is no correct default, so in Corella it is a setting — for the people you support, the people who deliver the work, your role names and the episode of care — and the interface follows whatever you choose.

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Corella's Settings screen: twenty-six tabs in three rows, Roster display among them, where an administrator chooses the organisation's words; the Organisation tab is open on the business details and billing defaults

Eight words, or your ownFour forms each, never derived

/clients stays /clientsLinks and bookmarks keep working

How it flows

Three choices, one save — and three things that stay put.

1Pick the word for the people you support
Eight ready-made words — client, patient, participant, resident, care recipient, consumer, customer, member — or Custom, where you type all four forms yourself.
2Pick the word for the people who deliver the work
Carer, support worker, nurse, clinician, care worker or staff member, or your own. It sits on the same card, because an organisation sets both in one sitting.
3Name your roles and your episodes of care
Rename the four built-in levels, with presets for nursing, aged care and allied health, and — if you run episodes of care — choose case, episode of care, referral or claim.
4Read the preview, then save
Settings shows how the words will read in the menu, a heading, a sentence and a column before anything is saved. One save, and the interface follows for everyone in the organisation.
5Three things stay where they were
Web addresses, the wording of documents a funding scheme requires, and every record you hold. The setting changes what the screen says, and the data underneath stays exactly as it is.

What people ask first

The short answers, up front.

What can we set?
Four kinds of word: the people you support, the people who deliver the work, your four role names, and the episode of care — four settings, one save.
Which words are ready-made?
Client (the default), patient, participant, resident, care recipient, consumer, customer and member — eight — plus Custom, where you type your own.
Why four forms of each word?
Because deriving them breaks: an added s turns person into persons and staff into staffs. Singular, plural and both capitalised forms are stored, never derived.
What happens to our web addresses?
/clients stays /clients whatever you call the people listed there, so bookmarks and links already sent keep working.
What do printed documents say?
Their own wording: a service agreement says the program's word — participant under the NDIS and Support at Home, client under CHSP — and yours for a private arrangement.
What happens to our records?
They stay exactly as they are. It is a display setting, so every record keeps its place, and documents already issued keep the wording they went out with.
Who does the setting cover?
The whole organisation, so a shared record reads the same way to everyone who opens it.
Do the workers' phones follow it?
Yes. The worker's screens are the same application, so in a nursing service the phone says patient, and in an NDIS provider it says participant.
What does a new role name change?
The label on screen. What each level can open is set separately, so access stays exactly as it was.
What about a family carer?
Where a form asks about the person's own family carer — carer fatigue, respite so a carer can take a break — the word stays carer, because there it means family, not your staff.
Can we change our minds later?
Yes, as often as you like — it's a display setting, so there's nothing to migrate, and documents already issued keep the wording they were issued with.
Who sets it, and where?
An administrator, in Settings → Roster display. The episode-of-care word appears there once the Cases & payers module is on.

Whose screen

The same job, from each seat.

A nurse and an older woman smiling at home

In the office

An administrator sets the words once, in Settings → Roster display, and the office reads them straight away: the menu, page headings, table columns, filters, pickers, dialogs, confirmation messages, the command palette, the in-app help, report titles and the column headings of reports exported to CSV. It is one choice for the organisation, so the record a coordinator reads is described the same way for the finance officer beside them.

On the phone

The worker's phone runs the same application, so it follows the same setting: in a nursing service the shift screen says patient, and in an NDIS provider it says participant. Nobody maintains two versions, and a worker never has to translate the office's word into their own.

For families

The portal speaks to the person directly — their plan, their invoices, their visits — so it rarely needs the word at all. Where it names who is coming to a visit that isn't filled yet, it uses your organisation's own name for the role: Care Worker to be confirmed by default, or whatever you have called that level.

A worked example

One save, and this is how it reads.

The preview Settings shows before anything is saved, here with Patient chosen for the people you support and Nurse for the people who deliver the work — the pair a community nursing or wound service picks.

In the menu: Patients
As a heading: Patient details
Mid-sentence: the patient's care plan
In a count (the preview's sample): 8 active patients
About your staff: visible to nurses
Next in line: the next nurse
As a column: Nurse visible

These are the product's own preview lines, straight from Settings. Saving changes the interface: /clients stays /clients, printed documents keep their own wording, and every record stays as it is.

In detail

The detail, on the real screens.

One picker, and the interface follows

Settings → Roster display → What you call the people you support. Eight ready-made words — client, patient, participant, resident, care recipient, consumer, customer, member — plus Custom. Save, and the word follows through the sidebar, page headings, table columns, filters, empty states, pickers, dialogs, confirmation messages, the command palette, the in-app help, report titles and the column headings of reports exported to CSV. Client stays the default, so an organisation that never opens the setting sees exactly what it always has. It is one setting for the organisation, chosen by an administrator.

The wound care demo's dashboard, set to Patient and Episode of care: the sidebar reads Patients and Episodes of care, the header counts six active patients and a tile reads Active patients — Set to Patient: the sidebar, the header's count and the tiles all follow. Care Signals, in the sidebar and a tile, is a separate AI module, switched on when you choose; its text is processed by our AI provider in the United States under terms that prohibit training on customer content.

All four forms are stored, never derived

Singular, plural, capitalised singular and capitalised plural are kept as four separate values, because deriving them breaks in ways you would notice every day. Adding an s turns person into persons and staff into staffs. Capitalising the first letter renders care recipient as Care recipient on one screen and invites Care Recipient on the next. The episode preset shows why typing all four matters: mid-sentence it says episode, but as a heading it reads Episode of care — something no rule could have worked out. Corella asks for all four and uses the right one in the right place: the patient's plan mid-sentence, Patients on a menu item.

A nurse in teal scrubs checking an older woman's blood sugar at her dining table

The word for the people who deliver the work

The people you support are only half of it. The word for your own people is its own setting — carer (the default), support worker, nurse, clinician, care worker or staff member, or your own — so a nursing service's screens say visible to nurses rather than visible to carers. It defaults on its own, too: an organisation that switches client to patient keeps carer until it chooses otherwise. And one boundary is deliberate. Where a form asks about a family carer — carer fatigue, or respite so a carer can take a break — the word stays carer, because there it means the person's own family rather than your staff.

How the words pair up

The settings move independently because sectors don't pair them the same way. A wound service says patient and nurse. An aged-care provider says care recipient and care worker. A SIL house says resident and support worker. An NDIS provider says participant and support worker, and an allied health clinic might say patient and clinician, with referral as its episode of care. The presets carry those hints in their own labels — Patient for clinical and nursing services, Referral for allied health and clinics, Care worker for home care and Support at Home providers — and each is chosen on its own. Pick each word on its own merits, or type your own.

A nurse talking with an older woman at home

Your web addresses stay put

This is the first thing a switching provider asks, and the answer is that web addresses stay exactly as they are. /clients stays /clients whatever you call the people listed there, and the episodes page keeps its address too. Bookmarks your team has kept for months keep working, links in emails already sent keep working, and links from your organisation's own website keep working. The word is a label on the screen, not part of a route — which is exactly why choosing a new one is safe, and why the picker says so before you save.

The screen says patients; the address still says /clients/

Where the program's own words apply

Some documents speak the funder's language. The NDIA's bulk payment file keeps the NDIA's own column names, because the NDIA is the one reading it, and a service agreement says the program's word — participant under the NDIS and Support at Home, client under CHSP — and yours for a private arrangement. Report exports follow your words, the incident register's included. Screens that exist only for NDIS work — plan management, NDIA claims and support coordination — and Support at Home's and funded meals' own screens keep the scheme's word, participant. The rule, stated plainly: the interface follows your words; printed documents keep their own wording, and a service agreement says the program's word (participant under the NDIS and Support at Home, client under CHSP), and yours for a private arrangement.

A nurse pointing to a line on a form while a man at the kitchen table reads along

A display setting, safe to change any day

Choosing a different word leaves every record exactly as it was. It is a display setting: the data, the links between records and the history all stay as they are, so there is no migration to schedule and no downtime to plan — you can try patient on a Tuesday and go back to client on a Thursday. Documents you have already generated keep the wording they were issued with, because an invoice or an agreement is a record of what was sent, and history stays in the words it was written in.

One colleague leaning over another's shoulder to point at her computer screen

The same choice for episodes of care, and for role names

The word for a funded piece of work is its own setting, built the same way: case (the default), episode of care, referral, claim, or your own, with all four forms stored. A clinic that thinks in referrals and a nursing service that thinks in episodes both get to say so, and the same three rules hold — interface only, web addresses unchanged, history intact. The fourth kind of word is your role names: rename the built-in levels, starting from presets for nursing, aged care and allied health, and the screens that name a role follow — including the portal's to be confirmed line on a visit nobody has been assigned to yet.

The participant portal's schedule on a demo account: supports booked over the next four weeks, some with a named worker and a meeting place, others reading Care Worker to be confirmed — An unfilled visit in the portal uses the organisation's name for the role — here the default, Care Worker

Straight answers

Safety built in: what warns you, and what it stops.

Warns you

Before you save, the picker says that web addresses stay as they are.
It also names what keeps its own wording: your role names, which have their own card, and a form's questions about a family carer.
The role-names card says in amber that renaming a role leaves what it can see exactly as it was.
A preview shows the word in the menu, a heading, a sentence and a column before anything is saved.

Stops you

A word longer than 40 characters is refused, so even a long custom word fits a menu item.
Every one of the four forms has to be filled in before it saves.
Only an administrator can change the words.
Changes from a demo pass — Settings open read-only there, so you can look round the picker freely.

The rulebook

Questions, answered properly.

In the help centre

Settings: Roster display

A nurse talking an older man through something in a consulting room

Is Corella for more than NDIS providers?

Yes, and this setting is the clearest sign of it. The operational spine — rostering, records, evidence, invoicing, payroll — is the same work whether you run a disability service, a community nursing service, an allied health practice, supported accommodation, aged care at home or a peer-support service. What differed was the vocabulary, and that is now yours to set. The NDIS parts are all there for the providers who need them, and everyone else works in their own words.

What happens to our web addresses when we choose a new word?

They stay exactly as they are. /clients stays /clients whatever you call the people listed there, and the same holds for every other page — the word is a label on the screen, while the address stays fixed. Bookmarks your team has kept, links in emails already sent and links from your own website all keep working, which is exactly why choosing a new word is safe.

Which word does an NDIS service agreement use?

Participant, the program's own word — and so does a Support at Home agreement; a CHSP agreement says client. A service agreement takes your word for a private arrangement, and the NDIA's bulk payment file keeps the NDIA's own column names. The rule is short: the interface follows your words; printed documents keep their own wording, and a service agreement says the program's word (participant under the NDIS and Support at Home, client under CHSP), and yours for a private arrangement.

What happens to documents we have already generated?

They keep the wording they were issued with. An issued invoice or agreement is a record of what was sent, so it stays in the words it was sent in. The new word shows on the screens from the moment you save.

What if our word isn't one of the eight?

Choose Custom and type your own. You supply all four forms — singular, plural and both capitalised versions — and Corella uses them exactly as you wrote them, up to 40 characters each, so even a long word sits neatly in a menu item.

Does one word cover the whole organisation?

Yes, deliberately: a shared record that two teams describe differently is a record two teams read differently. Genuinely separate services that need separate vocabularies can each run their own instance — worth raising on a walkthrough.

What does a form about a family carer say?

Carer, whatever your staff are called. In aged, palliative and continence care, carer usually means the person's unpaid family member — carer fatigue, respite so a carer can take a break — and those questions describe the person's own circumstances, so they keep the word carer.

Is there help inside Corella — and does it use our words?

Yes. Every screen, and every drawer or dialog that asks for something, has its own help — what it's for, the steps and the traps — and the product's own checks require every screen to have its help and every help page to describe a screen that exists. It uses your words for the people you support and the people who do the work.

What happens to access when we rename our roles?

It stays exactly as it was. Role names are labels: a nursing practice can call its levels Enrolled Nurse or Clinical Nurse Consultant, and the card that sets them says so in amber. What each level can open is decided separately, whatever it is called.

Can we try a different word later?

Yes, any time. It is a display setting, so the words can move as often as you like and the records underneath stay as they are; documents already issued keep the wording they went out with.

Does the episode-of-care word work the same way?

Yes. Case, episode of care, referral or claim — or your own — with all four forms stored and the same three rules: interface only, web addresses unchanged, history intact. It appears once the Cases & payers module is on, beside the screens it names.

Can we see it working before we commit?

Yes. The wound-care demo is set to patient, nurse and episode of care, so its menus, headings and columns already read that way. Settings open read-only on a demo pass, so you can look round the picker freely.

Guides for this

Read the rule behind it.

Sources

Guide to getting paid — NDIA

Each link opens the original, so you can read the rule where it's written.

See client, patient or participant — your words on a live instance.

Try the wound care demo with a time-boxed pass, or book a walkthrough and we'll show you this part of Corella in your own words.

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