The U.S. healthcare industry has struggled with staff shortages, a challenge that will only grow by 2025 when providers will lack hundreds of thousands of nurse practitioners, nursing assistants, lab technicians, and more. Hospitals in particular have been hit hard, as providers in all 50 states predict critical shortages in the months ahead.
Digital technology can help. The digitization and automation of patient and equipment forms, status reports, department workflows, and cross-department processes can avoid manual errors, save tremendous amounts of time, and make your existing staff more productive.
But traditionally, automation of forms, workflows, and reports required application development by expert developers on your IT team. That process is costly and time-consuming. Your teams need solutions today, not in three to six months. And in an era of short staff and tight budgets, providers can’t afford to field a cadre of professional developers.
Fortunately, there’s a surprisingly simple and affordable solution. An effective platform for no-code application development can give your medical facility new ways to build the software you need when you need it – quickly and cost-effectively.
Automating Healthcare and Business Processes
A no-code application builder enables your non-technical employees to create software applications, webforms, digitized workflows, feedback forms, online surveys, and more. Users simply drag and drop reusable form and workflow elements onto a virtual canvas. Behind the scenes, the no-code tool assembles a fully functional and secure application.
Your employees can select from templates to design user interfaces, map workflows, define form behaviors, enable data inputs, and generate reports. There’s no requirement for lengthy application development cycles or help from the IT department. Security is built-in, and data privacy remains protected. And automatic integration with popular IT platforms connects your no-code applications and workflows with other internal systems and processes.
One powerful advantage of no-code application development is that it enables employees across departments to optimize their own tasks. Staff members can design workflows that meet their unique needs, and then share templated processes and forms with their colleagues. Other employees readily adopt these streamlined processes, with little or no need for training.
Top Use Cases for No-code in Healthcare
A no-code tool is especially well-suited to automating routine provider processes, including:
- Patient and caregiver forms and applications
- Patient onboarding
- Billing and invoicing
- Automated payment setup
- Patient, family, and caregiver feedback
- Equipment requests and transfers
- Budget requests and approvals
- Procurement requests and approvals
- Capital expenditure forms
- Purchase orders
- Employee onboarding and offboarding
- Personal time off requests
- Expense reporting
A no-code app builder can enable departments across your practice and health system to:
- Empower healthcare professionals to automate administrative workflows
- Reduce or eliminate paper forms, data entry, and manual report creation
- Automate routine workflows
- Accelerate notifications and approvals
- Reduce or eliminate manual errors
- Increase productivity, save time, and reduce costs
- Improve process visibility and track process performance
- Enforce compliance
- Generate detailed reports about site operations
- Deliver faster, better services to patients and internal teams
Achieving Real-world Healthcare Process Improvements
Healthcare providers are already benefiting from no-code application development. Ogden Clinic, for instance, used no-code to digitize workflows, eliminate paper forms and reports, and optimize business processes.
The healthcare system, with more than 25 locations in the western United States, has automated more than 30 internal processes. It even integrated those processes with core databases and web services. It also maintains an audit trail to ensure regulatory compliance.
For example, Ogden used no-code to automate quality-assurance tests for clinical and lab staff. Clinicians take a self-grading electronic test to certify they’re up to date on legal and internal standards. If any clinicians fail the test, they’re automatically prompted to retake it, and notifications are sent to the relevant manager.
Increased Productivity, Fewer Manual Errors
An effective no-code tool will offer API integrations with core systems and processes, including those used for hospital, HR, and financial purposes. It will also provide capabilities to not only digitize workflows but also track their performance. As a result, your teams and managers can gain end-to-end visibility and maintain policy and regulatory compliance. Built-in audit-trail functionality can even enable you to demonstrate compliance.
With an effective no-code app builder, your medical facility can automate routine tasks, tangibly improve process efficiency, and cut down on manual errors. You can save costs while freeing up resources to focus on your core goal of delivering quality healthcare to patients.
