HM Ranked ‘Unparalleled’ in Recent KLAS Survey
In May, providers and clinicians systemwide participated in our second KLAS Arch Collaborative survey, providing valuable feedback on their overall Epic EHR experience, the technologies they use to care for patients and the support they receive to use those technologies. This year’s results are in, and it’s clear that feedback and action plans from our previous survey are improving our clinicians’ EHR experience, ensuring the EHR facilitates exceptional patient care.
What is KLAS?
KLAS uses standardized surveys to gather honest, impartial feedback from frontline providers and nurses, with real-world experiences. KLAS currently partners with over 300 health care systems and has surveyed over 500,000 clinicians to gauge their EHR experiences and uncover what factors contribute to clinicians having a better experience. KLAS compiles this data to create benchmarks, so health organizations, like HM, can see how we measure up to other organizations, identify opportunities for change and take actions to enhance our clinicians’ EHR experiences.
Feedback from our first KLAS survey in 2022 has been key in helping HM leaders understand where we need further development, leading to systemwide initiatives over the last two years to improve training, system performance and workflows, as well as driving our systemwide IT Service Transformation.
The Results
HM’s scores increased by 17.5 points, ranking us top among over 300 participating health systems, in the 97th percentile.
Strong scores were reported across all clinical backgrounds, with improvement by every group. Most respondents felt they have a voice in IT, changes are well communicated, they receive timely support and feel that IT is improving the EHR.
“Thank you to all our providers and nurses for your continued engagement and dedication to improving the tools and processes that support our unparalleled patient care,” said Dr. Jordan Dale, chief medical information officer. “This progress is a direct result of your feedback from our last survey, which has helped drive key, systemwide initiatives to enhance your Epic experience, provide you with better IT support and training and ensure your voice is heard in IT. Together, we’re making a meaningful impact in our clinicians’ experience with Epic.”
Clinicians also reported noticeable improvements in areas, such as clinical communication, efficiency and speed, documentation, ease of use and training. These improvements are leading to better communication and patient care coordination and helping our clinicians spend less time in the chart and more time with their patients.
Nurses shared positive feedback, noting the charting process is now “less duplicative and more streamlined” and expressing gratitude by saying, “Improvements have been helpful. Thank you for your hard work.”
While providers stated, “Secure Chat has allowed improved communication with care teams in and out of the ED and continued VICU optimization and support,” and “Showing me shortcuts to make me more efficient and how to customize my orders and SmartPhrases have been helpful.”
While this year’s KLAS survey results are strong, it’s important to ensure our clinicians continue to feel their voices are heard in IT and that we remain unparalleled in key areas by continuing to improve:
- Training efforts, including more personalization and workflow-focused training.
- Documentation burden reduction efforts for all areas:
- Streamlining and automation of documentation for clinicians.
- Decrease bureaucratic tasks and message burden for all clinicians.
- Address after hours documentation by providers and APPs.
- Onsite support and first call/request resolution processes.
- Building onsite support teams and collaboration with our IT customers.
- Bolstering knowledge base and other self-service resources.
- Epic’s reliability and response time.
Lisa Stephenson, chief nursing informatics officer said, “Thanks to your valuable KLAS survey feedback, we’re making significant strides in making our IT tools and resources more efficient for you, but our work is never done. Your feedback from this year’s survey indicated that you want us to continue to decrease your documentation burden. We’ll continue our efforts to identify and deliver smarter, more efficient solutions, so you can focus on what matters most — delivering exceptional patient care.”
What’s Next
We’ll also focus on innovative solutions as we embrace emerging technologies, like generative artificial intelligence (AI). This includes AI-generated summaries, such as reimagining how we do care plans, including an AI-generated end-of-shift care plan note pilot from Epic, Pieces Epic Insights, etc.
“Our latest KLAS survey results reflect the positive strides we’ve made in improving the technologies you use to care for patients, as well as the support you receive,” said Dr. Dale. “Our improved results underscore the importance of your feedback and that we take your responses seriously, turning your insights into action. While we’re proud of the progress we’ve made, we’re committed to using your continued feedback to serve as a foundation for future improvements, so we can make an even greater difference.”