How the right EHR training strategy can reduce costs and improve the clinician experience, and how to assess where your organization stands now.

Ask most health system leaders what drives EHR success, and they’ll point to the system itself: infrastructure, governance, personalization. But the data says otherwise.

In a KLAS Arch Collaborative study of more than 72,000 clinicians across 150-plus health systems, less than 20% of the variation in clinician experience was explained by which EHR was in use. How users rated the quality of the training, the pillar most often treated as an afterthought, was the single greatest predictor.

The financial stakes are just as real. UCHealth’s shift to role-specific, asynchronous training returns 200,000 clinician hours to patient care and saves $3 million in training costs annually, while nurse satisfaction with the training format rose 75%. Similarly, Fairview Health Services now saves $2 million in training costs annually after transitioning all roles to self-paced learning.

When it comes to the success of your EHR, training is a strategic lever, not just a line item to check off.

That’s the real question most leaders haven’t asked: is your training program built for the organization you are today, or the one you were five years ago? EHR upgrades, turnover, and mergers don’t pause for an answer.

Get it wrong, and those same decisions get expensive fast. For health systems that get it right, we consistently see five guiding principles that shape day-to-day decisions about content, delivery, and measurement.

1. Meet learners where they are

Effective training reaches clinicians at the point of need, not in a classroom weeks before they’ll use the skill. Shifting education out of the classroom and into the workflow is the single most impactful change an organization can make. In practice, this means in-app guidance, embedded tip sheets, and short simulations that live inside the EHR.

When Fairview Health Services embedded a microlearning video in its new eConsent workflow, adoption jumped from just 7% to 87%. Additionally, physicians who reference Fairview’s role-specific, workflow-based learning content score 19 points higher on Net EHR Experience Score than their peers. The intervention wasn’t a better EHR. It was investing in ongoing education that meets learners when and where they need it.

2. Simplify and centralize

Training is only effective if clinicians can find it when they need it. Centralizing learning content into a single, searchable repository gives users one trusted source for job aids, videos, and workflow guidance, as well as more formal learning experiences like training courses. It also simplifies governance by making it easier to maintain consistent, up-to-date content across the organization, while reducing duplicate content.

After Bellin Health and Gundersen Health merged into Emplify Health, the training team consolidated training resources into one platform, contributing to a 333% increase in active users and an 890% increase in content engagement. By centralizing learning in one repository, users knew where to go to find help, even amid a large Epic consolidation across two systems.

3. Measure what matters

Completion rates tell you who showed up. They don’t tell you whether training changed anything or improved readiness. The organizations seeing real returns establish a baseline early and track outcomes beyond attendance and completion: time in training, time in the EHR, help desk utilization, workflow adoption, and clinician satisfaction. This helps organizations determine not only if training is effective, but which parts of a training strategy are working.

In their 2025 Arch Collaborative Learning Summit presentation, Fairview compared “Deep adopters” of their learning ecosystem (F1 Dashboard, Learning Library, and Support Chat) against non-users. That analysis revealed that deep adopters reported:

• 27% higher agreement that ongoing training is sufficient
• 28% higher agreement that changes are communicated well
• 38% higher agreement that EHR support is timely
• 15% higher agreement that the organization delivers well
• 10% higher agreement that training is workflow-specific

The important story isn’t just the numbers; it’s that Fairview continued surveying throughout its transformation. The organization used user feedback and data to understand which parts of its strategy were working and where greater engagement produced better outcomes.

Establish baselines early, report progress to leadership, and use data to drive strategy and justify continued investment.

4. Relevance drives knowledge retention

Generic content is forgotten or dismissed quickly. Busy clinicians engage with, and remember, training that applies directly to their role, specialty, care site, and workflow. The more specific the content, the higher the adoption.

Relevant training doesn’t just help clinicians remember what they learn. Data from KLAS Research shows that when training is workflow-specific, clinicians are more satisfied with the EHR and report higher agreement that it supports efficiency.

Aspirus Health utilizes Curriculum Review Boards to ensure that new hire training reflects the organization’s standard workflows. After rolling out nurse-specific learning materials, satisfaction with the virtual training experience improved, and new nurses spent 50% less time documenting in Epic than they did before.

5. Enable your people, not just your systems

Technology is only as effective as the confidence clinicians have in using it, and that confidence extends beyond the EHR itself. It shapes how clinicians view the organization and IT leaders responsible for supporting their work.

KLAS Research has found that the quality of initial and ongoing EHR training is the strongest factor in clinician trust in IT and leadership.

As Dr. Stephanie Lahr, Chief Medical Officer of uPerform, puts it, “Training is not a downstream support function. It is a strategic lever.”

When clinicians are supported with high-quality, ongoing, and role-based training, they are more confident, satisfied, and proficient, enabling a better overall EHR experience.

Where does your organization stand?

Not every health system is starting from the same place. Some are still running classroom-only programs with no metrics beyond completion rates. Others have infrastructure in place but haven’t connected training to clinical outcomes or EHR upgrade cycles. A few are operating fully integrated learning ecosystems where the education team functions as a strategic partner to clinical and IT leadership.

This spectrum, from reactive to optimized, is how leading health systems assess where they are and what to prioritize next. The Training Transformation Maturity Model maps five levels of training maturity so your team can identify the gaps and build toward them with intention.

Where does your organization stand?

Not every health system is starting from the same place. Some are still running classroom-only programs with no metrics beyond completion rates. Others have infrastructure in place but haven’t connected training to clinical outcomes or EHR upgrade cycles. A few are operating fully integrated learning ecosystems where the education team functions as a strategic partner to clinical and IT leadership.

This spectrum, from reactive to optimized, is how leading health systems assess where they are and what to prioritize next. The Training Transformation Maturity Model maps five levels of training maturity so your team can identify the gaps and build toward them with intention.

The organizations that have moved from reactive to optimized didn’t start with a perfect strategy. They started with a clear framework and willingness to measure. The gap between where most organizations are and where the top performers operate is real, measurable, and closable. The first step is knowing where you stand.

Epic, MyChart, Care Everywhere, and Healthy Planet are trademarks of Epic Systems Corporation.