Sutter Health Cuts 400,000 Epic Clicks a Day: Why That Matters for International Nurse Recruitment in the U.S.

Sutter Health reduced nurse documentation burden by 400,000 EHR clicks per day with Epic optimization. Here’s how smarter workflows support retention and why international nurse recruitment is becoming essential for U.S. hospitals.

U.S. hospitals are learning a hard truth: you can’t recruit your way out of burnout if the work itself is broken. That’s why Sacramento-based Sutter Health a 27-hospital system made a bold move to simplify nursing documentation inside Epic EHR, cutting an estimated 400,000 clicks per day. The result wasn’t just operational. It gave nurses time back at the bedside, improved satisfaction, and reduced unnecessary charting.

And in today’s labor market where healthcare staffing shortages continue to pressure patient care these kinds of workflow wins are becoming a key part of the recruitment story, especially for organizations relying on international nurse recruitment to stabilize staffing.

From “Chart Everything” to “Document by Exception”

For years, nurses at Sutter Health were stuck documenting non-clinical details like whether a patient was watching TV or using a phone. It added up to a mountain of duplicative charting, often unrelated to patient outcomes. Internally, nursing teams described documentation as redundant and exhausting, and performance metrics reflected it: Sutter Health ranked in Epic’s bottom quartile for time spent in the EHR, and nurse satisfaction scores were low.

Then leadership revisited the problem with a different approach: let nurses help redesign the workflows.

The system launched Nursing FOCUS (Flowsheet Optimization and Care Plan Updates to Simplify Documentation) in February, starting with med-surg, ICU, pediatrics, and PICU. The goal was simple and practical: nurses chart normal findings less and focus documentation on exceptions the abnormal results that actually need attention.

What Changed Inside Epic?

Sutter Health streamlined the way nurses chart by:

• Reducing repetitive flowsheet documentation
• Shifting toward physiology-based care plans aligned with real nursing assessments
• Moving away from third-party content tools to Epic’s foundational platforms
• Training roughly 12,000 nurses to adopt the new documentation standards

This wasn’t a small tweak. In some surgical units, documentation reportedly dropped from 21 pages to two a shift that nurses immediately felt during busy shifts.

Measurable Results: Time Back, Satisfaction Up

After implementation, Sutter Health reported:

• 400,000 fewer EHR clicks per day (about 110 hours saved daily)
• 24% reduction in flowsheet documentation
• 20% fewer clicks overall
• 21% drop in incremental overtime related to charting
• A jump in nurse EHR satisfaction scores (moving above 60, a major gain in a short period)

The project took serious commitment around eight months of focused work with nursing informatics and IT teams but it created a blueprint other systems are now asking about.

Why This Matters for International Nurse Hiring

Hospitals often talk about staffing shortages as if the only solution is more headcount. But Sutter’s experience shows something important: better workflows improve retention, and retention directly impacts recruiting demand.

At the same time, many health systems still need more clinicians fast. That’s where international nurses are increasingly critical, especially for employers trying to fill hard-to-staff roles while maintaining quality and safety.

When hospitals combine:

1. smarter EHR workflows (less burnout), and
2. faster access to qualified talent (better hiring pipelines),
   they become far more competitive in today’s market.

How NurseContact Fits the New Reality

NurseContact is a digital marketplace that matches international nurses with U.S. employers and supports a streamlined hiring process helping reduce the friction that can slow recruiting in a high-demand environment.

For U.S. healthcare organizations, the winning strategy is no longer “hire more and hope it works.” It’s:

• Improve the nursing experience (reduce admin burden)
• Recruit globally to meet patient demand
• Standardize and accelerate hiring to fill roles faster

Sutter Health’s documentation transformation is proof that hospitals can give nurses time back and improve outcomes while still building a pipeline of talent to meet long-term staffing needs.