Case Study: West Tennessee Healthcare achieves 8,800+ nursing hours saved annually by streamlining documentation with Cerner

Nurses save thousands of estimated hours with streamlined documentation

West Tennessee Healthcare in Jackson, Tennessee, faced mounting clinician frustration as nursing documentation became duplicated and time‑consuming—tasks that often took 30–40 minutes instead of the expected 5–10. Leaders launched an optimization effort to reduce unnecessary discrete documentation elements and reclaim nursing time.

Partnering with Cerner’s Continuous Advancement Services, the system used Cerner Advance data to target inpatient, critical care, emergency medicine and respiratory therapy. After the December 2017 rollout, duplicate discrete task assays fell about 60% (from ~9,387 to 3,700), clicks per patient dropped 4.6%, and 587 nurses saved roughly 734 hours monthly (about 8,800 hours annually). Phase one is complete and the organization has moved into additional optimization work.

West Tennessee Healthcare

Teresa Freeman

Assistant Chief Nursing Officer and Clinical Informatics Officer