KLAS: Nurse EHR Burden Is Fueling Burnout as 40% Plan to Leave by 2029

Overview

• KLAS surveyed 80,147 acute care nurses at 179 organizations and found 79% lose time to unproductive charting, with 34% spending three or more hours weekly on duplicative or low‑value entries.
• Nurses with heavier unproductive charting reported higher burnout and turnover risk, including 46% burnout and 34% likelihood of leaving their organization.
• Duplicative flowsheet entries topped complaints, followed by inconsistent workflows and excessive required fields, and half of nurses ranked streamlining documentation as their top EHR improvement.
• The burden is most acute in critical care, where 46% report three or more hours of unproductive charting weekly, with high levels also in labor and delivery (37%) and PICU/NICU and medical‑surgical units (35%).
• Five organizations reported Net EHR Experience Score gains of 8.1–71.4 after targeted optimization, including Seattle Children’s 71.4‑point jump, Wooster’s removal of 96 fields saving 15,000 hours annually, and Mercy’s 32 minutes saved per nurse per day.