What you should know
- He KLAS Arch Collaboration has launched his doClinician EHR Experience 2026: State of the Industry impact reportwhich tracks EHR satisfaction benchmarks across 92 healthcare organizations and more than 121,000 physicians.
- A significant gap in clinical sentiment persists across disciplines: while 22% of physicians report an “Elite” (Level 6) EHR experience, only 12% of nurses reach the same level, and nurses are much more likely to remain stuck in “Basic” or “distressed” environments.
- Organizations that prioritize continuous optimization are making progress; Institutions that remeasured their data saw an average increase of 6.2 points in their Net EHR Experience Score (NEES) over the past year.
- Ambient AI documentation has become one of the most powerful efficiency drivers for clinicians, dramatically reducing after-hours check-ins and improving clinical quality of life.
- Reflecting macro changes in the industry, Arch Collaborative’s updated 2026 survey features an expanded focus on artificial intelligence, calling for new metrics required to track physician adoption of AI, clarity of training, and desired automation support.
The corporate healthcare delivery and clinical information technology sectors are operating under intense infrastructure pressure. Hospital leaders, chief medical information officers (CMIOs), and clinical operations leaders are forced to juggle an exhausting array of competing strategic priorities, from managing changing payer reimbursement models to mitigating persistent workforce shortages.
Amid these financial pressures, a historical data matrix from KLAS Arch Collaborative provides critical executive clarity: Organizations that consistently prioritize the frontline physician experience see a powerful, positive ripple effect across their entire operational footprint, reducing net clinical costs while elevating the overall patient experience.
At the center of this workplace wellness equation is satisfaction with electronic health records (EHRs). Far from being a simple software preference, a clinician’s daily interaction with their graphics environment serves as a primary determinant of operational efficiency and burnout. However, this experience remains highly fragmented and varies greatly from institution to institution, even among users using software from identical vendors.
To map this digital divide and provide a repeatable model for optimization, the KLAS Arch Collaboration has published his EHR Clinical Experience 2026: State of the Industry impact report. By synthesizing data from 92 healthcare organizations representing more than 121,000 surveyed physicians, the report sheds light on a stark reality: As technology adoption accelerates, our largest clinical workforce is falling increasingly closer to the bottom of the digital maturity curve.
Deconstructing the division of feelings: nurses versus doctors
Overall data from the 2026 cohort shows that the majority of physicians measured report at least moderate experience with EHRs on a day-to-day basis, and most participating health systems fall squarely into the Level 4 (Moderate) or Level 5 (Strong) satisfaction levels. However, when the data are stratified by clinical function, a deeply concerning functional divergence emerges between physicians and nursing teams.
According to the report, 22% of medical organizations surveyed achieved a Net EHR Experience Score (NEES) high enough to qualify for Level 6 (Elite), the primary benchmark required to earn the prestigious Arch Collaborative Pinnacle award. In contrast, only 12% of nursing cohorts achieved this elite level of performance.
More alarming is the density of nurses stuck near the bottom of the scale: 39% of nursing organizations are currently stuck in Level 2 (Distressed) or Level 3 (Basic) environments, compared to just 18% of their medical counterparts.
Because nurses represent the largest clinical workforce in the care delivery model and maintain the highest density of continuous patient touchpoints, leaving them stranded with suboptimal, click-heavy software represents a serious threat to operational resilience and patient safety.
Identifying Optimization Levers: What’s Working Now
Despite systemic challenges, the 2026 report explicitly demonstrates that reversing physician dissatisfaction is entirely possible through targeted, data-driven optimization campaigns. Among the subset of 51 progressive healthcare organizations that ran repeated measurements over the past year, the data documents an average increase of 6.2 points in the Net EHR Experience Score, with seven institutions generating massive score increases of 15 points or more.
An analysis of qualitative feedback collected from the front lines highlights the precise functional areas driving these positive changes:
Environmental Infiltration (Medical)
For clinicians, the rollout of ambient speech and documentation AI stands out as the clearest bright spot from the past year. Clinicians using integrated environmental tools describe enormous time savings, a substantial reduction in “pajama time” (after-hours charts), and an immediate improvement in quality of life. Other benefits include the transition to issue-based note writing, auto-populating documentation templates, and faster ordering mechanisms powered by intuitive smart sets.
Streamlining Clicks and Flowcharts (Nurses)
For nursing teams, improvements were driven by health systems actively focusing on documentation redundancy. High-performing organizations find success by eliminating duplicate chart fields, standardizing nursing notes, streamlining multi-click flowcharts, and introducing “single screen” layouts that allow nurses to maintain patient context while reviewing tasks. Intelligent speed-enhancing tools, such as macros, direct copy logic, and smart phrases, were widely celebrated as true time-saving tools.
Going from mediocre to elite: a viable executive roadmap
To move an organization from basic, frustrating technology loops to an Elite operational posture, KLAS Arch Collaborative outlines a mandatory set of leadership mandates for both healthcare executives and their EHR vendor partners:
1. Phased incorporation and layered education
Traditional “one-shot” classroom training programs consistently fail. Elite organizations stagger their initial training: starting strictly with workflow essentials for the first week and then deliberately layering advanced education over the first 90 days as clinicians gain confidence in the field. Additionally, providing just one hour of easily accessible continuing education per year generates huge returns in end-user satisfaction.
2. Enforce physician-led governance
Clinicians must maintain a direct and transparent voice in EHR configuration changes. Health systems should establish formal optimization request channels, driven by clinicians and supported by clear feedback loops. When a frontline request is modified or rejected, leadership must communicate the why, when and how directly to the affected department to maintain cultural trust.
3. Require the usability of external data
Integrating information from external laboratories, imaging centers, and external HIE networks continues to be a major issue across the industry, especially for organizations using non-Epic technology ecosystems. Clinicians report that 47% of the time they are unable to quickly isolate critical external data, while another 47% are forced to manually sift through duplicate data. Providers should leverage advanced AI graph summarization models to automatically synthesize external data streams into clean, actionable views.
