The C-Suite Playbook for Driving EHR Satisfaction and Achieving Epic Gold Star Success

In 2026, healthcare leaders are navigating a complex and demanding landscape. On one side, there's the critical mission to improve clinician satisfaction and combat the pervasive issue of burnout. On the other hand, there is constant pressure to meet the evolving, rigorous criteria for the Epic Gold Stars program and demonstrate ROI on a massive technology investment.

Too often, these are treated as separate battles fought on different fronts. The effort to soothe frustrated clinicians feels disconnected from the technical deep dive required to climb the Gold Stars ladder.

But what if this is a false dichotomy? What if these aren't two separate goals, but two sides of the same coin?

Shared during one of our recent webinars, this playbook presents a paradigm shift, built on the expert insights of Dr. Brian Patty, a 30-year veteran of both emergency medicine and clinical informatics. It’s a proven strategy to move beyond reactive problem-solving and build a unified, sustainable system where robust user satisfaction becomes the primary engine for long-term performance, talent retention, and top-tier Epic Honor Roll achievement. It’s time to stop playing whack-a-mole with EHR issues and start building a strategic framework for success.

What this playbook dives into:

• Why Is Clinician Burnout a Critical C-Suite Concern?
• Are You Playing Whack-a-Mole With Your EHR Strategy?
• How Do You Build a Sustainable Framework for EHR Satisfaction and Success?
• What's the Secret to Mastering Epic Gold Stars, EHR Satisfaction, and Driving Utilization?
• How Can You Design an EHR Training Program That Actually Works?
• Building Your House of Success

Why Is Clinician Burnout a Critical C-Suite Concern?

The term "burnout" has become so common that it's easy to dismiss it as a background buzzword. For the healthcare C-suite, that’s a dangerous mistake. The data is stark: according to recent Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 45% of physicians report at least one manifestation of burnout. While this is down from post-pandemic peaks, it shows a stubborn problem that hasn't significantly improved in over a decade.

This isn't just a wellness issue; it's a critical business continuity risk. An even more recent study from the Annals of Internal Medicine revealed that physician attrition from clinical practice is accelerating at an alarming rate. The operational impact is enormous, threatening everything from patient access to revenue stability.

As Dr. Brian Patty puts it in a recent webinar, the mandate for leadership is clear: “You need to keep the physicians and nurses that you have. You need to find ways to keep them, reduce burnout, and keep and reduce this attrition rate. Because if you do lose them, it's going to be harder and harder to find replacements at your organization.”

While the EHR is not the sole cause of burnout, it is an undeniable and significant factor. A frustrating, inefficient, and poorly supported system adds a heavy administrative burden to an already demanding job.

Conversely, a strong EHR satisfaction program is one of the most powerful levers an organization can pull. It directly impacts six of the seven key tasks recommended by leading institutions like the Mayo Clinic and the AMA for decreasing burnout, including enhancing clinical efficiency and decreasing administrative burden. Investing in EHR satisfaction is a direct investment in your most valuable asset: your people.
 

Are You Playing Whack-a-Mole With Your EHR Strategy?

Does your organization’s approach to EHR issues feel like a constant game of whack-a-mole? A ticket comes in, you knock it down. A complaint surfaces in a department meeting, and you dispatch a team to fix it. You are constantly busy, constantly solving problems, but never seem to make strategic headway.

This reactive cycle is a common trap. When faced with an issue, the instinct is to attack it immediately. But Dr. Patty warns: this approach wastes energy on the periphery instead of addressing the core issues.

“They're spending a lot of energy attacking the periphery,” he explains. “They're playing whack-a-mole. They see an issue, they attack it... They're being reactive and not proactive.”

The fundamental flaw in this approach is that it tackles symptoms, not the root disease. It’s the difference between patching a leaky pipe and redesigning the plumbing. Dr. Patty advocates for a more strategic method inspired by Lean principles: take a step back, measure to understand the true source of the problem, and then develop a programmatic, systematic approach to solve it.

This shift is crucial. It’s about moving from being an IT fire department to being the architect of a system designed for success. Before you can get ahead of the game, you have to stop chasing it. The solution lies in building a durable framework that can support your entire organization.

How Do You Build a Sustainable Framework for EHR Satisfaction and Success?

To escape the whack-a-mole trap, you need a blueprint. Dr. Patty has developed and refined a model he calls the "House of Success for EHR Satisfaction," a clear, intuitive framework that has been validated by his work with numerous organizations and by KLAS Research. This model provides a programmatic way to organize and prioritize your efforts.

The Foundation: Nailing EHR Speed and Reliability

Every strong house needs an unshakeable foundation. As Dr. Patty emphasizes, this is the non-negotiable first step. “If your foundation isn't solid… no matter what you do in the rest of the house, the rest of those pillars, it's not going to have a huge impact. You have to nail the implementation, speed, and reliability issues first.” This means keeping up with Epic upgrades, ensuring your network is robust, and proactively measuring performance with dedicated tools instead of waiting for help desk calls.

The Pillars: A Multi-Faceted Approach

Once the foundation is solid, you can erect the pillars that support the entire structure. These are the core components of a comprehensive EHR satisfaction program:

• Governance & Communication: Giving end-users a voice and ensuring decisions are communicated effectively.
• Personalization: Equipping users with the tools to customize their workflows and save time.
• Workflow Optimization: Ensuring the EHR supports clinical processes efficiently, not hinders them.
• Training & Support: Providing users with the knowledge and just-in-time help they need to master the system.

While each pillar is important, it is clear that one stands above the rest in its immediate and profound impact on user experience. This article will now take a deep dive into the most critical pillar: a world-class training and support program.

What's the Secret to Mastering Epic Gold Stars, EHR Satisfaction, and Driving Utilization?

For many organizations, the Epic Gold Stars program can feel like a daunting checklist, a technical mountain to climb that feels disconnected from the day-to-day satisfaction of clinicians. The "House of Success" model reframes this completely. Achieving a high Gold Star level isn't the goal itself; it's the outcome of a well-built house. It's the external validation that your system is not only well-configured but also deeply adopted and effectively used.

To turn this concept into an actionable strategy, Dr. Patty offers a powerful and elegant tactic: "Mind the Gap."

Epic has significantly enhanced the Gold Stars program by providing data on two key metrics for each feature: Implementation (did you turn it on?) and Utilization (are your clinicians actually using it?). The space between these two numbers is where the gold is.

Dr. Patty explains the insight: “I tell organizations now, when you're looking at gold stars, mind the gap. If you see a huge gap… between your implementation score and your utilization score, that's a golden opportunity… It's one of two things, or it could be both. One, people don't know that you implemented it, and so it's a communication issue. Or two, people know that you implemented it, and they don't know how to use it, and so it's a training issue.”

This simple analysis transforms the Gold Stars report from a technical scorecard into a high-ROI treasure map. It tells you exactly where to focus your limited communication and education resources for the biggest impact. Instead of generic training, you can launch targeted campaigns on underutilized features that you have already invested in implementing. It’s the most direct path to boosting both your Gold Stars rating and the daily efficiency of your users, directly addressing the core issues like how to use Epic and the need for effective Epic software training.

How Can You Design an EHR Training Program That Actually Works?

Training and support are the pillars that hold the roof up. It’s the most direct and consistent way you can impact a clinician’s daily experience with the EHR. A world-class program isn’t a single event but a continuous system built on three distinct, equally important components.

Pillar 1: Nailing Onboarding and Implementation

Whether you are launching Epic for the first time or onboarding a single new physician, that initial training experience sets the tone for their entire relationship with the EHR. A successful approach to Epic software training moves beyond simply teaching features; it focuses on mastering complete clinical workflows. This means the training is broken into two essential parts. The first part covers the foundational skills, the 'what' and 'how' of using core tools like placing orders, navigating charts, and writing notes.

The second, and more critical part, places those tools in context. As Dr. Patty notes, “A lot of organizations fall short on the workflow training… How do I use that in a day in the life? Walk people through scenarios.”

Furthermore, adult learners retain only a fraction of what they hear in a classroom setting. Onboarding cannot be a one-and-done event. A structured follow-up process at 30, 45, or 60 days is essential to reinforce key concepts, introduce advanced personalization, and address the real-world questions that only arise after a user has been in the system for a few weeks.

Pillar 2: Overcoming the "Achilles' Heel" of Ongoing Education

Here lies the most common point of failure for even well-intentioned organizations. The budget and energy are focused on the initial implementation, but then the resources fade away, creating a situation where your biggest EHR training investment is disappearing.

“Ongoing training is probably the number one thing that I see organizations fail at,” Dr. Patty states bluntly. “They think, ‘Oh, we've implemented Epic, we can now let most of our training team go.’ No. Epic is constantly changing, your organization is constantly changing, you have new people coming in all the time.”

So, what does a successful ongoing program look like? KLAS data has identified a “sweet spot”: 3 to 5 hours of training contact per year. Delivering this requires a multi-modal approach that meets clinicians where they are, respecting their immense time constraints:

• Go to Them: Instead of pulling them away, integrate into their existing schedules. Dr. Patty emphasizes, “I consistently see this as one of the top ways that physicians want to learn more about Epic: come to our department meetings.” The same applies to nursing unit meetings. A quick 15-minute tips-and-tricks session in a meeting they already attend is invaluable.
• Targeted Coaching: Use Signal data to identify individuals or departments that are struggling and offer proactive one-on-one sessions to help them personalize their setup and master inefficient workflows.
• Embedded Trainers: Have your training team round in clinics and on inpatient units. This allows them to observe workflows in real-time, offer immediate tips, and critically bring feedback about systemic issues back to your governance teams.
• Scalable, On-Demand Resources: For this to work at scale, you need a system that offers help at the moment of need. This is where a just-in-time training platform becomes a force multiplier, embedding searchable tip sheets, short videos, and microlearning content directly within the workflow. It solves the problem of "I know I learned this once, but I can't remember how."

Pillar 3: Building a Lifeline with Real-Time Support

When a busy clinician is in the middle of a workflow and gets stuck, they cannot afford to wait. This is more than an efficiency issue; Dr. Patty reframes it as a patient safety issue.

“You have to get them unstuck now so that they can continue taking care of that patient,” he insists. “You can't rely on them putting a ticket in and solving it for them in a couple of days or months when somebody gets around to that ticket.”

This necessitates a real-time support team that functions as a rapid response unit, not a traditional, tiered help desk. A generic IT help desk, while valuable for technical issues, often lacks the deep clinical workflow knowledge to solve complex user problems effectively. Over 90% of calls from clinicians are training issues, not broken code.

Building an effective real-time support structure requires:

• The Right Expertise: The team must have a clinical background. Physician builders, clinical informaticists, and nurse super users are ideal because they understand the why behind a user’s actions.
• The Right Ratio: KLAS data suggests a minimum ratio of 1 support resource for every 250 users to have a meaningful impact. Dr. Patty recommends aiming for a best-practice goal of 1-to-100, a mix of dedicated staff and leveraged super users. This team provides "at the elbow" or remote support to solve problems on the spot.

What Does This Transformation Look Like in Practice?

Is this programmatic approach achievable? The results from a real-world case study Dr. Patty presented speak for themselves. He was brought into an academic medical center struggling deeply with its EHR.

The Challenge:

The organization was in a dire state. They were three years out of date with Epic, stuck at a 2-3 Gold Star level, and plagued by significant speed and downtime issues. Their training team was a skeleton crew of just five people for 2,500 physicians. Many providers had received no training at all since the initial implementation seven years prior. The result? A staggering 12% annual physician turnover rate.

The Solution:

Applying the "House of Success" playbook, they launched a systematic overhaul.

1. Foundation First: They got up-to-date on Epic upgrades and solved the core speed and reliability issues.
2. Pillar Investment: They secured buy-in to dramatically expand their support structure. The training team grew from 5 to over 20 people. They established a physician governance team, with all members becoming certified Physician Builders.
3. Proactive Training: In the first year alone, they retrained over 800 providers and offered every provider 4 hours of ongoing training per year. They conducted over 650 one-on-one personalization labs.

How did they get the buy-in for such a dramatic increase in the training team?

By starting small and proving value. “We started to put this team out there, and we had physicians saying, ‘This is the greatest thing since sliced bread,’ Dr. Patty recalls. 'And I said, ‘Okay, tell that to your administrators.’ We kept doing that… and we soon had a groundswell of physicians and nurses saying, these support teams are what we need.”

The Results:

After just 18 months, the transformation was profound.

• They were maintaining an 8-9 Gold Star level.
• Their KLAS Arch Collaborative satisfaction score skyrocketed from the 45th percentile to the 99th percentile.
• Most critically, physician turnover was cut in half, dropping from 12% to 6%.

This case study is the ultimate proof: investing strategically in EHR satisfaction and a robust training program is not an IT expense. It is a high-return investment in operational stability, clinician well-being, and quality of care.

Building Your House of Success

The path to high EHR satisfaction and top-tier Epic performance is not through a series of frantic, disconnected fixes. It’s through the deliberate, methodical construction of a sustainable program. By stabilizing your foundation, minding the gap between implementation and utilization, and building a world-class, three-part training and support system, you can fundamentally transform your organization’s relationship with its most critical clinical tool.

Boosting EHR satisfaction is not just an IT project. It’s a core C-suite strategy to reduce burnout, dramatically improve talent retention, and create an environment where clinicians are empowered by technology, not burdened by it.

Ready to stop playing whack-a-mole and build your own House of Success? Discover how Jeeves, our AI-powered Just-in-Time training platform, can help you bridge the utilization gap and empower your clinicians at scale.

You can watch the full webinar on “​​Make Epic Training Work for You and Watch User Satisfaction and Gold Stars Soar” with Dr. Patty here.