Case Study: University of Tennessee Medical Center achieves 65,000+ annual nursing hours saved by reducing EHR time with Cerner

University of Tennessee Medical Center reduces nurses’ time in EHR

University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville faced excessive nurse time in the electronic health record (EHR) due to heavy customization, unnecessary navigation and duplicate charting—at one point there were 52 different places to document a pulse—making it hard for staff to find and trust the same information.

Working with Cerner’s Continuous Advancement Services, the center streamlined iView documentation, removed unused fields, enabled direct charting, and replaced free-text PowerForms with custom MPages and a Nursing Handoff Workflow. The changes helped 1,085 nurses save more than an estimated 65,000 hours in the EHR annually (including a 12% drop in documentation time per patient equal to 13,524 hours), eliminated 2.1 million non‑essential nursing tasks over six months (a 33% reduction), and improved charting accuracy, nurse satisfaction and patient safety.

University of Tennessee Medical Center

Brant Sloan

Nursing Informatics Coordinator