Clinician EHR Experience 2025
State of the Industry
Healthcare’s staffing shortage crisis is real and ever present, and there has never been more urgency for organizations to improve the clinician experience. Healthcare organizations cannot enhance clinicians’ lives without creating a successful EHR experience. This report—the first in a new annual report series—delves into what has improved and what hasn’t in the past year, key findings from KLAS’ Arch Collaborative research, and success stories from Arch Collaborative members. Additionally, this report introduces the new EHR Experience Levels, which are intended to help organizations consistently measure and improve clinicians’ EHR experiences.
Access the feedback of
500,000+ clinicians worldwide
Access the feedback of
500,000+ clinicians worldwide
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Arch Collaborative EHR Experience Levels: Clinicians Are More Likely to Have a Poor EHR Experience Than an Elite One, Most Are Stuck in the Middle
To date, roughly 45% of US health systems have measured clinician EHR satisfaction through the Arch Collaborative EHR Experience Survey. To help organizations better understand their survey results and improvement opportunities, the Arch Collaborative has created the EHR Experience Levels (see below). The healthcare industry has work to do regarding clinician EHR satisfaction, as only 22% of nurses and 18% of physicians have a strong (Level 5) or elite (Level 6) EHR experience. Most organizations hit a ceiling at a moderate EHR experience (Level 4). However, the Arch Collaborative can help organizations break through that ceiling. Improvement is possible when healthcare organizations and HIT vendors prioritize improving clinicians’ well-being and organizational culture.
Improvements & Challenges from the Past Year
What Is Improving?
The following table outlines significant improvements to the EHR experience that nurses and physicians have reported seeing in the last 12 months.
| Nurses | |
|---|---|
| Enhanced training: Nurses credit ongoing training and superuser support with improving their EHR proficiency. Enhanced training has equipped many nurses to use tools (e.g., charting templates, macro tools) to more quickly and consistently document patient information. | |
| Enhanced user interfaces: Revamped interfaces and easier navigation have helped nurses more quickly find data and complete tasks. Some also note their EHR runs more quickly and reliably, which makes the tool less frustrating to use. | |
| Secure messaging: These tools have improved communication and care coordination. Improvements to patient communication tools (e.g., patient portals) enable nurses to electronically send education materials or instructions. | |
| Physicians | |
|---|---|
| Ambient speech: AI-powered documentation assistants have significantly reduced physician documentation time and improved their quality of life. To learn more about ambient speech vendor performance, see KLAS’ 2025 report on this segment. | |
| Enhanced user interfaces: Recent EHR updates have refreshed and streamlined user interfaces with cleaner layouts and easier navigation (particularly for order entry). | |
| Secure messaging: Physicians value being able to chat with other care team members in real time via the EHR, improving collaboration and reducing delays in communication. For many physician teams, secure messaging is an indispensable tool. | |
What Is Stuck?
The following challenges are trends that the Arch Collaborative has seen through our data over the last 12 months.
| Nurses | |
|---|---|
| Documentation burden: Reducing the documentation burden is the number-one requested EHR fix for nurses. 35% of nurses spend three or more hours per week on unproductive charting (e.g., charting that is duplicative or adds no value). For insights on the nursing documentation burden, see this report. | |
| Physicians | |
|---|---|
| Message burden: 47% of ambulatory physicians report an excessive message volume, and the number of physicians reporting a high message burden is projected to grow as patients’ use of messaging tools expands. For a look at how ambulatory physicians are balancing message volume with patient expectations, see this report. | |
Key Takeaways for 2025
You May Not Know How Much Your Clinicians Are Struggling with EHR Response Time
For 80% of organizations who have measured with the Arch Collaborative, less than 70% of clinicians agree that the EHR has a fast response time. Most healthcare leaders do not realize that many clinicians struggle with slow EHR response times, which can be caused by a variety of reasons. Healthcare organizations and EHR vendors need to partner together to examine the broader clinician EHR experience and identify why many clinicians report slow EHR response times (e.g., login or Wi-Fi challenges). Poor response times can frustrate other aspects of clinicians’ experiences, though they often tolerate this issue because they don’t know that the problem can be fixed.
Luckily, healthcare organizations who have measured with the Arch Collaborative prove that EHR speed can be improved—see this Success Pathway for best practices around creating a stable, fast EHR experience.
Voice of Organizational Leadership
“From a metrics perspective, we often hear levels of frustration, but we don’t exactly know where to look or how to peel back the layers of what is working versus what isn’t working. One crucial piece of information that we have learned is that no matter how many updates or modifications we made to our EHR, if our VDI experience or our login experience isn’t where it needs to be, then it doesn’t matter how many improvements we make with the EHR if the device is still slow. We are living that right now and truly understanding how crucial it is. I started doing some rounding with my team, and clinicians can’t do what they need to do to take care of patients in front of them if their devices aren’t working. The survey really opened our eyes into thinking about the holistic experience to satisfaction and not just the EHR experience.” —Director of clinical transformation
Strong Organizational Culture Is the Key to Moving from Good to Great & Encourages Clinicians to Stay
Healthcare organizations who have achieved Level 6 have the fewest clinicians who say leadership is a contributor to burnout (see chart below), as these organizations know that importance of moving from an “us versus them” mentality to a shared “we” that includes both leaders and clinicians. As more and more clinicians leave their organizations or the healthcare industry altogether, organizations need to figure out how to reduce or eliminate burnout factors (including leadership and EHR decisions) for clinicians.
What Did Pinnacle Winners Do to Improve Organizational Culture?
- Moved from an “us versus them” mentality to a shared “we” that includes both leaders and clinicians
- Prioritized and validated clinicians’ voices
- Made clinicians critical stakeholders in EHR decision-making in partnership with IT teams
Clinicians who are dissatisfied with their organization’s leadership or IT are almost twice as likely to plan to leave their organization within the next two years than satisfied clinicians
Voice of the Clinician
“I am leaving due to burnout from a chaotic work environment and lack of shared values from organization leadership. [There has been] inconsistent, poor, and even a complete lack of communication from leadership. I love my job, the nurses, and the interdisciplinary relationships with other medical professionals. The leadership is what has driven me away.” —Advanced practice provider
“The EHR should be a collaborative effort between IT and providers. At best, IT is very protective of its privilege and little fiefdom. At times, it seems like they think providers are here to make IT’s work smooth and efficient. IT management, as opposed to the trainers and helpers, really does not understand our needs or even seem interested in what they are.” —Physician
Voice of the Executive
“Culture is a soft metric that is highly consequential. It isn’t the kind of thing people can enter in a spreadsheet to prove a monetary ROI, but culture is a massive metric. Our culture has improved because we invested in improving the clinicians’ experience. There are innumerable factors to culture, but we have created a strong presence with our providers. We let them know we are listening to them and making changes. We get in front of the providers every quarter to let them know about major changes that are coming based on the pain points they have reported. I think this matters a lot.” —Executive
Success Stories from EHR Experience Pinnacle Award Winners
See below for success stories from Pinnacle Award winners. Click on each organization’s logo to see their full case study. For the 2024 Arch Collaborative award winners, see this section of the report.
Johns Hopkins Aramco Healthcare credits their success to their strong EHR governance structure and culture of celebration, building high trust and goodwill among clinicians. Each governance committee includes a formal charter to clarify key elements of the committee, including ownership, purpose, members, function, meeting recurrence, and decision-making.
Children’s Nebraska focuses on EHR support and shared ownership, with the guiding philosophy of “satisfy the users, simplify the systems, and secure the environment.” The organization’s governance board keeps clinicians in mind when making decisions and provides them with well-honed tools that enable effective patient care. Children’s Nebraska also abides by set governance philosophies to make standardized decisions and prevent inconsistencies when simplifying the EHR.
Mackenzie Health views all EHR changes through the lens of the clinicians that the changes will impact. In particular, nurses are engaged at every stage and are empowered to contribute to decision-making. This collaborative approach fosters a positive perception of organizational leadership among clinical staff and reinforces a culture of shared responsibility and innovation.
UTHealth Houston believes that strong shared ownership and collaboration have empowered their EHR success. When rolling out a new EHR module, the organization’s shared ownership committees and councils disseminated information and provided support to clinicians. Physicians are empowered to make decisions and enact change. When a physician needs at-the-elbow EHR assistance, they can turn to one of several physician champions, who are embedded within each department.
Organizations Are Making Dramatic Improvements to Clinicians’ EHR Experiences—Focus Is Key to Success
The myth that clinicians will never be happy with the EHR is untrue—many healthcare organizations are making great progress toward improving their clinicians’ EHR experiences. However, achieving the highest EHR Experience Levels doesn’t happen by chance. Healthcare organizations must intentionally focus on aligning strategic priorities and creating an elite EHR experience for their clinicians. At a high level, an elite EHR experience requires the following elements shown below.
What Does an Elite EHR Experience Look Like for Clinicians?
An environment of shared values, teamwork, and a patient-first mentality
Quick login and system response times so clinicians don’t have to waste patients’ time
Onboarding education that prepares users for their specific workflows
Ongoing education and EHR personalization so that the system works the way users think
EHR governance structures that involve clinicians in decision-making
Effective communication around EHR-related changes
Celebrating Progress Along the Way—One Organization’s Journey to an Elite EHR Experience
Many of the healthcare organizations who have won an Arch Collaborative EHR Experience Pinnacle Award didn’t immediately achieve excellence; rather, success was a journey that required measurement, ongoing focus, refinement, and remeasurement.
One organization who measures with the Arch Collaborative started the journey to improving their clinicians’ EHR experience in 2017, initially scoring a Level 3. In response, this organization focused on continually refining the EHR experience and increasing clinician satisfaction through improved EHR education. As a result of the organization’s efforts, between their 2019 and 2020 measurements, their NEES increased by 20 points and they rose to Level 5.
The organization did not stop there—they continued to enhance the EHR for clinicians, ultimately resulting in a NEES of 68.9 for physicians in their most recent measurement—a 40-point increase from their first measurement. This increase led to this organization achieving Level 6 and receiving an EHR Experience Pinnacle Award.
Number of organizations who received a Breakthrough Recognition between 2024 and 2025
Want to Know How Your Organization Is Doing? Measure with the Arch Collaborative
By working with the Arch Collaborative, healthcare organizations can gain a deeper understanding of their clinicians’ experiences as well as specific guidance on what to improve.
- Measure your clinicians’ experiences and learn your NEES/EHR Experience Level
- Adopt best practices from Arch Collaborative case studies and reports
- Measure your improvement year-over-year
- Celebrate progress through the EHR Experience Breakthrough Recognition
- Continue progressing to achieve the EHR Experience Pinnacle Award
2024 Arch Collaborative EHR Experience Pinnacle Award & Breakthrough Recognition Winners
For more information on how to qualify for the Breakthrough Recognition or Pinnacle Award, see here.
2024 EHR Experience Pinnacle Award Winners
Nurses (NEES of 75.0 or higher)
Physicians (NEES of 60.0 or higher)
2024 EHR Experience Breakthrough Recognition (15-point or greater increase)
Nurses
- Amsterdam UMC
- Arkansas Children’s†
- Centra Health†
- Frances Mahon Deaconess Hospital
- Intermountain Health
- Jefferson Health
- Southern Illinois Healthcare
- The Guthrie Clinic†
- University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
- Valley Children’s Healthcare
Physicians
- Advocate Health
- Allina Health†
- Baptist Health Montgomery†
- Baylor Scott and White Health
- Bellin Health
- Connecticut Children’s
- Cottage Health†
- Dayton Children’s Hospital
- Franciscan Health
- Harbin Clinic†
- HCA Acute (New Hampshire)†
- Henry Ford Hospital
- Inova
- OhioHealth†
- OrthoVirginia†
- Penn Medicine†
- Piedmont Healthcare
- The Queen’s Health System†
- RUSH University Medical Center
- Scripps Health†
- SUNY Upstate
- University of Kansas Medical Center
- University of Utah Hospital
- UVA Health
- UW Health
Both physicians and nurses
- Children’s Nebraska
- CommonSpirit Health
- Corewell Health
- Door County Medical Center
- King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Centre
- Lehigh Valley Health Network†
- Mayo Clinic
- Mount Sinai Health System†
- Ozarks Healthcare
- Royal Children’s Hospital
- Sutter Health
- UMass Memorial Health†
- University of Vermont Medical Center
- WellSpan Health
† Not current members
What Is the KLAS Arch Collaborative?
The Arch Collaborative is a group of healthcare organizations committed to improving the EHR experience through standardized surveys and benchmarking. To date, over 300 healthcare organizations have surveyed their end users and over 600,000 clinicians have responded. Reports such as this one seek to synthesize the feedback from these clinicians into actionable insights that organizations can use to revolutionize patient care by unlocking the potential of the EHR.
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Clinician Efficiency and Personalization, Clinician Relationships and Communication, Nursing EHR Success, Onboarding EHR Education, Ongoing EHR EducationThis material is copyrighted. Any organization gaining unauthorized access to this report will be liable to compensate KLAS for the full retail price. Please see the KLAS DATA USE POLICY for information regarding use of this report. © 2019 KLAS Research, LLC. All Rights Reserved. NOTE: Performance scores may change significantly when including newly interviewed provider organizations, especially when added to a smaller sample size like in emerging markets with a small number of live clients. The findings presented are not meant to be conclusive data for an entire client base.