79% of nurses lose time to unproductive charting: KLAS

Nearly 8 in 10 acute care nurses say they lose time each week to unproductive charting, and those facing the heaviest documentation burdens are significantly more likely to experience burnout and consider leaving their jobs, according to a Dec. 16 report from KLAS Research.

The report, Reducing Nursing Documentation Burden 2025: Addressing a Critical Pain Point for the Largest Clinical Profession, is based on survey responses from 80,147 acute care nurses at 179 healthcare organizations. It identifies documentation burden as the most frequently cited EHR-related challenge among nurses.

Here are six key findings from the report:

• KLAS found that 79% of acute care nurses report losing time to unproductive charting, with 34% saying they spend three or more hours per week documenting information they view as duplicative or unnecessary.
• Nurses who reported higher levels of unproductive charting were more likely to experience burnout and consider leaving their organization.
• Reducing or streamlining documentation was cited by 50% of acute care nurses as their top requested EHR improvement — far exceeding requests related to system performance or data accessibility.
• Duplicative documentation emerged as the most common issue driving dissatisfaction. Sixty percent of nurses who identified documentation as their top concern said they are required to enter the same information in multiple places, particularly within flowsheets. Others cited a lack of standardization and excessive required fields that provide little clinical value.
• The burden was most pronounced among critical care nurses, 46% of whom reported losing three or more hours per week to unproductive charting. Nurses in labor and delivery (37%), neonatal and pediatric intensive care units (35%), and medical-surgical units (35%) also reported high levels of documentation burden.
• The report highlights five healthcare organizations that achieved measurable improvements in nurse EHR satisfaction after implementing documentation optimization initiatives. These organizations reported increases in Net EHR Experience Scores ranging from 8.1 to 71.4 points after reducing redundancy, standardizing workflows and involving frontline nurses in redesign decisions.

KLAS noted that while technologies such as mobile documentation tools, device integration and AI-based summarization are increasingly available, the most successful organizations paired technology with workflow redesign, training and governance to reduce documentation burden.

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