Australia could face a shortfall of around 79,000 nurses by 2035 without reform [1]. Workforce availability is already uneven. In 2024, very remote areas had 2.7 full-time-equivalent medical practitioners per 1,000 people, compared with 4.8 in major cities [2]. This leaves some providers with less flexibility to respond to growing demand through recruitment alone.

Recruitment, retention and workforce wellbeing remain essential. But new and existing staff will continue to lose time if they must re-enter patient information, check status across systems or chase routine follow-up. Increasing headcount does not remove these workflow problems.

Healthcare organisations therefore need to identify where skilled time is being lost before deciding which processes or technologies to change. Three recurring workflow problems provide a practical place to start.

Staff lose time to work that sits around care rather than within it: correcting patient details, chasing routine updates and finding context that should already be visible. Each task may seem minor, but together they add up across teams and services. These tasks support service delivery, but poor workflow design can make them more repetitive than they need to be.

Repeated Information Capture Creates Work Before Care

Patients may provide the same details in a form, at reception and again during an appointment. When information is missing or unclear, staff must call back, search records or pause the next step. This creates more work before the appointment and leaves less time to prepare for the care decision ahead.

Routine Follow-Up Takes Time Away from Care

Reminders, incomplete forms, appointment confirmations and routine status updates are often handled one call or email at a time. When the workflow does not reliably track completion or trigger the next action, staff must check each case manually. The workload grows as patient volumes increase.

Fragmented Information Makes Teams Rebuild Context

Referrals, prescriptions and follow-up often cross several teams and systems. Information may exist without being visible to the person responsible for the next action. When status and ownership are unclear, staff spend time finding information, confirming what has happened and rebuilding context before work can continue.

Before changing the workflow, the organisation needs to understand how often each problem occurs and how much additional work it creates.

Once the source of pressure and current performance are clear, the organisation can decide whether the response requires process redesign, better integration, automation or a combination of these.

Once the source of pressure and its operational impact are clear, the next step is to choose a capability that addresses the specific source of avoidable work. Technology should fit the workflow, connect with existing systems and preserve the decisions that require professional judgement.

At the workflow entry point, KPS Patient Intake Suite helps organisations collect structured patient information, identify incomplete submissions and track completion before care begins. This can reduce repeated data entry, paper handling and routine follow-up.

When time is being lost across handovers, status checks and ongoing follow-up, KPS Integrated Healthcare Platform connects information and actions across the care journey. It is designed around the provider’s workflows, systems, roles and governance rather than treating each task as a separate point solution.

KPS works with healthcare organisations and delivery partners to tailor these capabilities around existing workflows, systems and governance. Each implementation can then begin with a defined source of pressure and a measurable outcome.

Australia’s healthcare workforce shortage requires both a people strategy and an operational response. Recruitment, retention, training and workforce wellbeing help build and sustain the workforce. Better information and more reliable workflows help existing teams spend less time correcting information, chasing updates and rebuilding context - and more time delivering care.

A practical starting point is one recurring workflow problem. Measure how it performs today, improve the process and check whether the change reduces delays and manual follow-up without shifting work elsewhere. Healthcare operational efficiency should be measured in more staff time available for care, not simply a higher volume of completed tasks.

KPS works with healthcare organisations and delivery partners to tailor capabilities around existing workflows, systems and governance. The objective is clear: reduce avoidable work and give care teams more time for the work that needs their skills.