Nursing Commission Experiencing Delays in Renewals

From the Washington State Department of Health:

Renewals for all health care professionals have been delayed in the last two months.  The following memorandum explains some of the reasons why and some of the measures in place to improve the process If you need to inquire about a pending renewal the telephone number is (360) 236-4700.  Please feel free to share this information with any additional list serves or distribution lists to spread the word.

DOH takes steps to speed licensing and cut backlog

We  launched  a new computer licensing system in February. As many of you know, we had a rise in backlog during that startup. This has caused serious delays for our customers. We apologize for this.

We do have good news. During the past several weeks, we have reduced the backlog from 18 days to about 10 days. Each day represents the amount of work typically done in an eight- hour workday.

We expect processing to continue to speed up. Many factors have contributed to the improvement. Some of the most important are:

• Staff are learning the system.
• Additional hardware, memory and Internet capacity has improved system performance.
•  We have added staff resources.

We have also focused attention on the most urgent license renewals. This will help us avoid having licenses expire when the department has already received a renewal with the correct information and fee.

Those seeking renewals can help speed the process. Our automatic renewal system is working smoothly. If a customer submits the correct fee, provides required information and has no changes to a license, we can process the renewal in a day or two.

By contrast, manual renewals are currently taking us  about  two weeks to process. We have to do manual renewals when a customer wants to make changes, such as in an address, forgets to submit continuing education information or submits the incorrect fee.  We hope to see the two week lag time reduced to less than a week very soon.  

We are encouraging customers to submit address changes separately. This allows them to get a faster renewal. Customers can send changes in names or address to either our email box or fax machine. Our email address is hpqa.csc@doh.wa.gov and fax number is 360-236-4818.

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