Introduction to OnCall Health's API

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This guide is beginner friendly

If you've never touched an API before (or are hazy on the details of how they work), this guide is for you. If you have a technical background and would like to start using OnCall Health's API, proceed to this page.

Welcome to OnCall Health's API documentation!

This guide will provide a high level overview of what OnCall Health's API is and why you might want to use it.

What is an API?

API stands for application programming interface. It's a piece of software that forms a bridge between two separate applications, allowing data to flow from one to the other.

For example, imagine a provider schedules an appointment in your electronic medical record (EMR) system. To get that appointment into OnCall Health, you have two options:

1. Have the provider manually create that appointment in OnCall Health
2. Have the appointment automatically transfer to OnCall Health

OnCall Health's API is a system that could facilitate Option B. The steps would be such:

1. Your provider schedules an appointment in your EMR
2. Your EMR automatically "asks" OnCall Health's API to schedule the appointment in OnCall Health as well
3. OnCall Health's API validates the request to ensure it is indeed coming from your EMR
4. If the request is legitimate, OnCall Health's API creates the appointment in OnCall Health

Appointments are just one type of record that can be transferred using OnCall Health's API. For a full list, visit this page. You can also keep reading this article for a non-technical explanation of these records.

How does this all get implemented?

If you're an enterprise customer with access to OnCall Health's API, our solutions consulting team will help you determine whether your EMR is compatible with our API.

If it is, our solutions consulting team will work with your technical team to identify the ideal workflow and set the integration up.

Common use cases for OnCall Health's API

Next, let's discuss some of the common ways clients use OnCall Health's API (aside from keeping appointments synchronized, which we've already discussed).

Keeping your list of providers updated in your EMR

A provider is an essential type of record in OnCall Health. Consequently, maintaining parity between the list of providers in your EMR and the list of providers in OnCall Health is crucial for both systems to function properly.

OnCall Health's API can help you automate this process. For example, if a provider has been deactivated in OnCall Health, your EMR can identify and handle this the next time someone attempts to schedule an appointment with that provider.

Retrieving form responses

Organizations that use OnCall Health often collect patient information (i.e. intake assessments or GAD7 scoring) using forms. These responses can be accessed via OnCall Health's API and used to update records in your EMR.

Creating custom analytics

While OnCall Health has a robust front-end analytics tool that can be used manually, organizations occasionally want to access that data in a more automated way. OnCall Health's API can be used in these scenarios to run custom scripts that fetch and analyze data.

For example, your organization could write a script that calculates how much revenue each provider is responsible for. Once you've fetched that data from OnCall Health, you can integrate with other workflow automation systems (i.e. to email the report to your administrators weekly).

Benefits of using OnCall Health's API

Avoid double entry

Your healthcare organization's staff members have lots on their plate. Having to manually enter data multiple times is an error-prone and time-consuming process. Many of our clients much prefer having an API integration that synchronizes these records automatically.

Maintain accuracy across your systems

OnCall Health's API can be used to reconcile records between OnCall Health and your EMR. This ensures records not only transfer between systems upon creation but also stay synchronized as users make changes in either system.

Ensure a more seamless experience for your providers and patients

OnCall Health's API can help your providers and patients forget your EMR and OnCall Health are actually standalone applications. A well-built integration will have data flowing seamlessly between the two systems.

Harness the power of OnCall Health in imaginative ways

OnCall Health's API gives your developers the power to build complex, fully custom workflows that extend our application's functionality. Want to pull custom analytics? Build a script that uses our API. Want to create a directory of your providers in OnCall that updates in real-time? It's possible thanks to our API.

Decrease the likelihood of data entry errors

Errors are costly, both in a financial and human sense. Errors are also inevitable when you rely on busy humans to reconcile data between OnCall Health and your EMR. Appointments get missed, forms aren't filled out, notifications don't send, and any number of other things go wrong.

By facilitating a connection between OnCall Health and your EMR, our API greatly reduces the likelihood of these errors.

What's next?

We hope this article has helped you understand what OnCall Health's API is and how it can benefit your company. If you're ready to start using our API, contact your customer success manager for next steps. You can also navigate via the sidebar to our other API guides.