The Washington State Department of Health (DOH) recently launched a new licensing system for all health professionals and facilities in Washington state on April 29, 2025. The Healthcare Enforcement and Licensing Management System (HELMS) was developed to create efficiencies, improve user experience, streamline processing, strengthen data access, and reduce paper-based activities.
Important Guidelines for Using HELMS:
- As a nurse or applicant for a nursing credential, you will need to manually add the HELMS Portal when renewing or applying in HELMS for the first time. This step is completed once you have logged into your current or new Secure Access Washington (SAW) account. Please do not access the former DOH Online Renewal or Online Application Portal services, as they have been retired.
- If you have held, currently hold, or have ever applied for a healthcare credential in Washington state, you will need to locate your account within HELMS to link these credentials to your account. Please only create a new account if this is the first time you have ever applied to Washington state for any healthcare credential.
- The Department of Health is no longer mailing courtesy renewal reminder cards out to licensees. If there is an email assigned to the existing account for a licensee, an automated email reminder from the HELMS database prompting online renewal will be sent to the email on file approximately 90 days prior to your renewal due date (birth date). Please view the online renewal instructions on our website for additional information.
We are currently experiencing longer than usual application processing times due to this recent implementation. Thank you for your patience as we process applications, renewals, and requests in date order received.