Building a Healthcare Management Platform with Informat: A Customer Journey
When RegionalCare Health Network, a multi-specialty healthcare provider with 12 clinics, 300 providers, and 150,000 active patients, assessed its operational technology in 2024, the diagnosis was clear: inefficient, fragmented, and increasingly unsustainable. Patient scheduling was managed through a combination of a legacy practice management system and manual phone calls. Care coordination between primary care and specialists relied on fax and phone tag. Referral management was a black hole — referring physicians never knew whether their patients were seen. And the IT department of eight people could barely keep the existing systems running, let alone build the digital capabilities the clinical and operational teams were demanding. Two years later, RegionalCare has built a comprehensive healthcare operations platform on Informat — transforming patient access, care coordination, and operational efficiency. Here is their story.
The Challenge: Fragmented Operations, Growing Demand
RegionalCare's technology challenges were typical of mid-sized healthcare providers. The legacy practice management system handled basic scheduling and billing but was difficult to customize and impossible to integrate with newer digital tools. Patient communication — appointment reminders, care instructions, follow-up scheduling — was manual and inconsistent. Referral management between primary care and specialists was a major source of patient dissatisfaction and clinical risk, with paper-based processes that resulted in lost referrals and patients falling through the cracks. The clinical and operational teams had a long list of needs that IT could not address — and the backlog was growing faster than IT could clear it.
The Solution: A Healthcare Operations Platform on Informat
Rather than attempting to replace the legacy practice management system — a multi-year, high-risk project that the organization could not afford — RegionalCare adopted an "innovate around the core" strategy using Informat. New digital capabilities would be built on the low-code platform, integrated with the practice management system through APIs, and deployed incrementally — each capability delivering value independently while building toward a comprehensive platform.
Digital Patient Access
The first capability delivered: a patient portal enabling online appointment scheduling, automated appointment reminders, digital check-in, and access to lab results and care plans. Built in 8 weeks on Informat, the portal integrated with the legacy scheduling system to show real-time availability, automated insurance verification, and sent confirmations and reminders through the patient's preferred channel (text, email, or phone). Within six months, online scheduling accounted for 40% of all appointments, reducing call center volume and dramatically improving patient satisfaction. No-show rates dropped by 25% due to automated multi-channel reminders.
Referral Management and Care Coordination
The most clinically impactful capability: a digital referral management system that closed the loop between referring and receiving providers. When a primary care physician initiated a referral, the system captured the clinical reason, attached relevant records, identified in-network specialists with availability, and sent the referral electronically. The receiving specialist's office confirmed receipt and scheduled the appointment. After the visit, the consultation note was automatically shared back to the referring provider. And if a referred patient did not schedule within a defined timeframe, automated follow-up triggered. Referral completion rates improved from 65% to over 90%, and referring physician satisfaction improved dramatically.
Results and Key Lessons
Two years into their digital transformation, RegionalCare's results are compelling: 40% of appointments scheduled online, 25% reduction in no-show rates, 90%+ referral completion (up from 65%), and 8 major capabilities delivered — each in 12 weeks or less. The lessons they would share: innovate around your EMR/EHR, don't try to replace it (core clinical systems are too complex and risky to replace; wrap them with modern digital capabilities instead), start with patient access (it delivers visible value quickly and builds momentum for broader transformation), and involve clinicians in design from day one (applications built without clinical input will not be adopted, regardless of their technical quality). RegionalCare's journey continues — but the platform they have built on Informat has proven that governed low-code development can deliver meaningful healthcare transformation at a speed and cost that traditional healthcare IT approaches cannot match.