Nursing and IT leaders told Becker’s they’re working to make their EHRs friendly for nurses by involving them in the governance process, consistently soliciting feedback and using the technology to reduce documentation burden.
Health IT researcher Black Book Research recently named the top 20 health system EHRs for nurses, based on results of a usability survey involving thousands of nurses.
Becker’s reached out to the health systems to ask: “What makes your EHR so nurse-friendly?” Here are their responses:
Mary Connell, MSN, RN. Assistant Vice President and Chief Nursing Informatics Officer of Geisinger (Danville, Pa.): We’ve had Epic since the late ’90s, and so it’s given us quite a bit of experience leveraging Epic and partnering with Epic and partnering with our IT teams and our nursing teams so we can get the best product. One of the things we implemented over the course of the last two to three years is having a nursing governance group specifically focused on documentation and alerts in Epic. That’s really allowed nurses at the bedside to guide the changes occurring in Epic so they make the most sense.
We’ve also focused in on any of the tools that Epic provides that we can leverage to allow nurses to be a little bit more efficient, whether that’s documenting, leveraging some type of macro to speed up their documentation appropriately, or condensing the information so they can chart more fluidly, using something like charting by exception or charting normals and moving forward that way.
Nelita Iuppa, DNP, RN. Associate Chief Nursing Officer and Executive Director of Nursing Informatics at Cleveland Clinic: Cleveland Clinic has implemented targeted strategies to enhance the nursing EHR experience, including optimizing alerts and notifications for clinical relevance, establishing a focused annual nursing improvement plan, integrating smart medical devices for seamless data capture, and leveraging system features to support efficiency with risk-stratified and prioritized, high-impact nursing tasks. In addition, we are intentional in supporting our nurses with strong informatics. These tactics ensure that our EHR is shaped by nursing-centric strategic priorities and promotes ease and efficiency and empowers nurses with a strong voice in shaping digital technology for their practice.
Jill McKinney, BSN, RN. Vice President and Chief Nursing Informatics Officer of Novant Health (Winston-Salem, N.C.): What makes our EHR nurse-friendly is the deep, ongoing partnership we’ve built with our care teams since its launch more than a decade ago. From the beginning, our goal has been to design workflows that are intuitive and reduce administrative burden, allowing nurses to focus more on patient care. Today, we have clinical informaticists dedicated to our facilities as well as our institutes. These individuals regularly round with nursing team members to provide support, address challenges and tailor workflows to specific roles or service lines.
As a Magnet-designated organization, we make sure our nurses are involved in shared governance and decision-making. We have dedicated nurse champions who meet monthly to review EHR updates, raise questions and bring insights back to their departments. This collaborative, clinician-led approach ensures our EHR continues to evolve in a way that supports high-quality patient care, enhances team efficiency, and empowers nurses at every level.
Jill Sheipline, BSN, RN. Vice President and Chief Nursing Informatics Officer of Corewell Health (Grand Rapids and Southfield, Mich.): 1. Our commitment to involving nurses directly in EHR governance. This approach ensures the voices of those closest to patient care are not only heard but actively shaping the system. By having their insights at the table, we’re able to create a system that truly supports clinical practice, improves efficiency, and ultimately enhances patient care.
2. We have a strong focus on continuous education. We offer ongoing learning opportunities designed to help nurses achieve mastery in using the EHR effectively. These courses are tailored not only to enhance technical skills but also to align individual preferences and workflows ensuring the training has meaningful impact. By investing in our nurses’ confidence with the system, we empower them to deliver safe and efficient care.
3. Our training model is taught by nurses for nurses. We have a strong partnership between our Epic training team and frontline nursing staff who cofacilitate training sessions. This collaboration brings a unique and practical perspective to the classroom because these credentialed nurse trainers truly understand the day-to-day workflow. They know what nurses need to be successful and how best to teach it, making the learning experience more relevant, effective and impactful.
4. Our proactive approach to feedback. We prioritize continuous two-way communication with nurses through EHR governance, rounding, and surveys throughout the year. Feedback isn’t just collected — it’s valued and acted upon. We’ve built strong processes to ensure nurse input directly informs improvements. A key part of making this possible is our dedicated informatics and training team, who work to translate feedback into meaningful changes that enhance the EHR experience for nurses. An example of this is a process my team developed for staff to send nonurgent workflow questions directly to Informatics utilizing a QR code. This offered the ability to reach second- and third-shift staff often missed by rounding. We’ve seen great success with this process and continue to expand its offering to more and more units.
Robin Shepherd, DNP, RN. Vice President and Chief Nursing Executive of Banner Health (Phoenix): At Banner, our mission is to make healthcare easier so life can be better for patients and clinicians. We’re innovating boldly to reduce administrative burden of our clinicians by 50% in the next five years. Our EHR is nurse-friendly due to our active interprofessional governance of EHR development and improvement, including our nurse-led Nursing Documentation Burden Council, ensuring nursing documentation is value-added and continually streamlined. We’re committed to meeting clinical complexity with nursing clinical device integration, nursing communication tools, and at-elbow EHR support specialists to support a more seamless and connected EHR experience. Every minute saved in the EHR is an added minute for our nurses to be more patient-facing, fulfilling their passion to provide safe and exceptional patient care.
Lisa Stephenson, MSN, RN. Chief Nursing Informatics Officer of Cedars-Sinai (Los Angeles): Our EHR is nurse-friendly because nurses have input into the design. Cedars-Sinai is committed to engaging subject matter experts and nursing leaders in formal and informal feedback opportunities to elicit their feedback. This is done through governance councils, surveys, workgroups, and other open forums. We also can analyze utilization data and time spent in the EHR to identify opportunities to streamline workflows. Our inpatient and outpatient clinical informatics team, most of which are nurses themselves, is driven every day to improve the EHR and other digital tools used by nurses and clinicians.
Cheryl Steward, MSN, RN. Director of IT Clinical Informatics at Main Line Health (Radnor Township, Pa.): Our EMR is nurse-friendly because it’s built and optimized around the needs of frontline staff, with the clinical informatics team at the center. We bring clinical and real-world expertise across disciplines and collaborate closely with analysts to design workflows that truly work. We have implemented a Reducing Documentation Burden workgroup, which focuses on streamlining documentation to enhance nursing workflows and give nurses more time back at the bedside. For example, we’ve optimized the visual layout of Within Defined Limits documentation for clarity and speed, improved flow sheets to enable charting by exception, and implemented macros and copy-forward functionality to reduce repetitive tasks. Our use of macros alone is saving nurses in the organization over a million clicks each month, and that number continues to grow. Our clinical informatics team also focuses on optimizing interruptive alerts, ensuring they’re actionable and minimize disruptions. By engaging nurse leaders and frontline staff, we continuously refine the system, creating an EMR that’s efficient, supportive and allows nurses to focus on patient care.
Amy Trainor, BSN, RN. Senior Vice President and CIO of Ochsner Health (New Orleans): Our focus and one of our guiding principles is to “give clinicians time to care.” We strive to have our nurses spend less time at the computer and more time at the bedside. We join listening sessions to hear their feedback and use that to improve our system. Our nurse-centric IS team continuously works to improve workflows for their colleagues, supported by a strong super user program. Our virtual nurse and nurse innovation programs help us prioritize and cultivate an environment for constant improvement and innovation. Sometimes, the most impactful improvements are low-tech process changes, and we listen to our nurses to focus on what they find most powerful. Our system CNO provides opportunities to interact with bedside nurses regularly, solicit feedback, and update them on the latest technology changes.
Donna Wellbaum, MSN, RN. Chief Nursing Informatics Officer of UCLA Health (Los Angeles): Meaningful nurse engagement at every stage of the process is key. Our nurses aren’t just end users; they’re active collaborators. They help drive changes by submitting ideas, providing design input, and participating in governance councils. Their insights into the day-to-day realities of patient care ensure that the tools we implement solve real problems, improve workflows, and support professional judgment and autonomy. One example of nurse-driven change resulting in real impact: a redesign of the macros feature saved our nurses over 500,000 clicks a month by streamlining flowsheet documentation.
Nancy Yates, MSN, RN. Vice President and Chief Nursing Information Officer of AdventHealth (Altamonte Springs, Fla.): At AdventHealth, we’ve made it a strategic priority to reduce documentation burden and improve the EHR experience for nurses — because better tools mean better care. Over the past two years, we’ve focused on simplifying workflows, enhancing mobile documentation, and ensuring real-time charting is both intuitive and efficient.
We’ve enabled personalized macros, optimized Flowsheet functionality, and streamlined charting methods to prioritize meaningful, timely documentation. These efforts have saved more than 10 million clicks each month — returning thousands of hours to our nurses while improving accuracy and reducing redundancy.
We have also built a robust peer support model, with more than 600 frontline nurses serving as superusers and EHR champions across our system. With dedicated training and protected time, they provide on-the-ground feedback that drives real optimization. This nurse-led model is not only improving adoption — it’s shaping how we build a better EHR experience from the inside out.
