Custom app for reporting incidents in healthcare
An incident starts as something nobody can yet name. Whether it is later identified as one depends on whether it is reported at all, and that happens in the first minute after a shift, standing in a corridor with a phone in hand. Every hurdle at that moment costs you a report you needed.
Why the first minute is decisive
The Wkkgz obliges care providers to report calamities, violence within the care relationship and dismissals due to serious underperformance to the inspectorate, each time within three working days of identification. In addition, you must be able to report and investigate incidents internally, because without that internal flow there is nothing to establish anything from.
That internal report is both the foundation and the weakest point. It is made by people who have just finished a shift, often not at a desk, and who feel that a report could work against them. A thirty-field form at a workstation in the staff room yields the reports that someone considered important enough to sit down for.
What you miss are the others: the near-misses, the things that turn out in hindsight to be a pattern, the event that only a week later proves to be a calamity. Those get reported only when reporting takes less effort than not doing it, and that is a design question rather than a policy question.
How we build this
The report made at the moment itself is the unit here. If it arrives, the organisation can afterwards determine what it is; if it does not arrive, there is nothing to determine.
We ask not what has been reported but what has not been reported, and why. That conversation yields the design, more than the existing report form does.
What, where, when and how serious, in fixed choices with room for free text. Anything beyond that is a reason to skip it.
The reporter does not classify or assess. They describe, and the organisation weighs it up. That lowers the threshold and prevents a calamity from coming in as a minor incident.
Every report enters the process in which it is weighed up for what it is. That side sits in the Wkkgz software; the app stops at reporting.
What the app does in practice
The app does little, and that little must be operable one-handed in a corridor. Which components you need depends on your type of care and your reporting culture.
Reporting in a few taps
What happened, where and when, with fixed choices and room for your own words. The app itself fills in what it knows: time, location, reporter and shift.
Describing without classifying
The reporter does not say whether it is an incident or a calamity; that is a judgement the organisation makes later. This is also how cases come in that someone thinks are not serious.
Photo where that is possible and permitted
For material damage or an unsafe situation, an image is quicker than text. For events involving a client, restraint applies, and the app enforces that as a rule rather than offering it as advice.
Working offline
At a client's home, in a basement or in a lift. The report is stored locally with the actual time and sent as soon as there is coverage.
Confidential reporting where it fits
Some reports concern colleagues or the organisation itself. A route in which the reporter is not directly visible to their own line manager produces reports that would otherwise never come in.
Passing it on to your reporting system
The report lands in the system your committee works in, via integrations. The assessment and deadlines are set out in Wkkgz software.
Who we build for
Where and when reporting happens differs greatly by type of care. Four situations.
Hospitals and clinics
There is a reporting system and a committee, but reporting happens at a workstation after the shift. The gain lies in the reports that currently get stuck in the corridor.
Long-term care and care for people with disabilities
Incidents between clients also fall under the reporting duty. These are often seen as everyday reality and therefore go unreported. How a complaint from a close relative is handled runs through complaints management software.
District nursing and outpatient teams
The care worker is alone at the client's home and has no colleague to discuss it with. Reporting in the moment, offline, is the difference here between reporting and not reporting at all.
Small practices
No committee and no reporting system, but the same obligation. Here the app is often the entire system rather than just its front end, with the deadline monitoring from Wkkgz software included.
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The app is the front end of your reporting process, not a separate register. What is reported in it ends up where your organisation assesses it.
Why Appfront
Reporting should take less effort than not reporting
That is the only measure that counts. We design for the number of taps, not for the completeness of the form.
The reporter does not classify
Someone who has to choose between incident and calamity chooses low. We let the reporter describe and the organisation weigh, because that weighing has consequences for a deadline.
There is no signal at the client's home
The report is stored locally with the actual time. That time matters later, because deadlines hang on it.
Feedback keeps reporting going
A reporter who never hears anything back won't report next time. That is why we build in brief feedback, even when the outcome is that nothing further was done.
Security and privacy
A reporting app on a device that goes out with staff holds client data and sometimes data about colleagues. We limit offline storage to the user's own open reports, show no client files in the app, and make sure a lost device can be disconnected remotely. Permissions attach to the user, not the device, even when a team shares one phone.
There is also a trust issue that shapes the design. A report may concern a colleague's conduct or the organisation itself, and if the reporter suspects their name goes straight to their line manager, they won't report. We therefore build a route in which the reporter is not directly visible to their own line, with a small circle able to see the identity where that is needed for the investigation. That is an organisational choice you make in advance; we implement it. How we handle security ourselves is set out in our information security policy; reports from outside come through our vulnerability disclosure policy.
Frequently asked questions about the reporting app
Because the form captures the reports someone sits down to make. What you miss are the reports that occur in a corridor and are forgotten afterwards. In community nursing and outpatient teams, there is often no workstation within reach at the moment something happens.
No, and that is deliberate. Someone who has to choose between incident and calamity tends to choose lower, and a report then arrives with no deadline attached. The reporter describes what happened; the organisation determines what it is, and only at that point does the three-working-day deadline begin.
Fully anonymous reporting often makes investigation impossible, which is not in the interest of the reporter or the client. What does work is a route in which the identity is known to a small circle but not to the reporter's own line manager. Where that boundary lies is a choice for your organisation; we build it in.
Yes, that is the starting point. The report is stored locally with the actual time and sent as soon as there is a connection. That time matters later, because deadlines apply to handling.
For an unsafe situation or material damage, an image is quicker and clearer than text. Where a client may be identifiable, restraint applies and sometimes a prohibition. We set that rule per report type within the app rather than leaving it to the reporter's judgement.
It should, and it is the cheapest way to keep reporting going. Someone who never hears anything back won't report next time. A short piece of feedback is enough, even if the outcome is that nothing further was done.
This app is the front end: reporting at the moment itself. The Wkkgz software covers what happens afterwards: the assessment, the moment of determination and the deadlines towards the inspectorate. They share a single stream.
That depends on the number of report types, whether the confidential route needs to be included, and which system it integrates with. A report app with photos and offline working is usually quick to put to use; the confidential route and feedback cost more. We give a reasoned estimate after the discovery phase.
Getting more reports in?
Ask a nurse what was not reported this month, and why not. That answer is your design brief. We build this as a standalone app and as part of a wider custom app development or custom software development project.