September 9, 2025
As OCHIN marks our 25th anniversary, we’re reflecting on the powerful and lasting impact of our Health Center Controlled Network (HCCN) initiatives.
OCHIN’s HCCN is now in the fifth phase of funding from the Health Resources and Services Administration, marking 13 years of innovation. The program continues to expand consultative support to more than 100 participating health centers nationwide. This milestone highlights our HCCN’s vital role in advancing our vision of achieving good health and well-being for everyone.
One initiative aimed at supporting clinician well-being helped participating health centers adopt tools and strategies that improved not only their use of technology, but also the health and sustainability of their care teams.
Addressing the full spectrum of clinician wellness and burden
While optimizing technology is essential to reducing burden and enhancing wellness, OCHIN practice coaches applied OCHIN’s holistic framework for wellness to support health centers at every level—technological, cultural, and relational.
This broader lens ensures that wellness initiatives go beyond efficiency and usability to promote personal fulfillment and build resilience.
Health centers participating in this clinician well-being initiative developed action plans that addressed both burden and wellness in thoughtful and creative ways:
- Streamlining communication: One health center paired OCHIN Epic QuickActions—a tool to streamline in-basket clutter—with efforts to help clinicians set boundaries and adopt shared norms for internal messaging.
- Addressing burnout at the root: Another health center surveyed clinicians, engaged stakeholders, and applied change management strategies to shift organizational culture, recognizing that optimization tools alone weren’t enough.
- Improving onboarding and efficiency: Several health centers focused on onboarding processes and supported staff with customizable templates and optimized preference lists to streamline visit workflows.
- Enhancing patient portal use: One clinic enabled patient portal functionalities to reduce in-basket inefficiencies and addressed patient education to improve use and expectations.
The key takeaway: Reducing clinician burden and enhancing wellness requires investing in the people, culture and technology of an organization.
"These sessions did help us learn about tools available to us and do more in-depth thinking about how to support provider documentation practices."
—Quality Improvement Manager at OCHIN HCCN participating health center
The importance of OCHIN data and consultative support
This initiative was powered by collaboration across OCHIN teams, including clinical programs experts, medical informaticists, and practice coaches. This cross-functional approach enabled multi-layered support and uncovered new opportunities for improvement.
Health centers used multiple data sources to inform their strategies, including:
- Epic Signal: Action log data shared during kickoff sessions helped tailor operational improvements and training.
- KLAS survey data: Used to find areas for improvement, uncover root causes of burden and explore potential solutions—both independently and in combination with other data.
By combining diverse data sources with expert insights, health centers were empowered to make strategic decisions that directly support their clinicians.
“Thank you for this, it’s been helpful to go through this process to scaffold our ideas for improvement.”
—OCHIN HCCN participant
Reinforcing OCHIN's commitment to clinician well-being
This initiative didn’t just support HCCN participating health centers—it helped shape how OCHIN approaches clinician wellness and EHR satisfaction across the network. The tools and lessons learned have informed new resources on OCHIN’s member portal and inspired deeper alignment around best practices.
As OCHIN celebrates 25 years of advancing community health, initiatives like this reaffirm our commitment to helping health centers create healthy, sustainable, and people-first care environments—where clinicians feel supported, connected, and empowered to thrive.
To learn more about OCHIN’s HCCN, visit ochin.org.
This program is supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of an annual award totaling $2,955,000. The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by HRSA, HHS, or the U.S. Government. For more information, please visit HRSA.gov.
