Best EHR for Clinics in 2025: What Care Teams Should Look For
Choosing an EHR in 2025 is no longer just about digital charts. Clinics now run hybrid care models, track SDOH, coordinate referrals, and manage multiple care teams. An effective EHR should support all of this without slowing down staff.
This article breaks down what matters most when evaluating EHR systems today, the common pain points clinics face, and how tools like Pillar healthcare software align with real clinical workflows.
What an EHR System Does Today
An EHR (Electronic Health Record) is a digital patient chart, but its role has expanded. Modern clinics use EHRs to:
Document visits: Stores patient encounters in a structured way, reducing errors and improving continuity.
Share information securely (HIPAA + FHIR): Ensures safe exchange of clinical data between providers and systems.
Coordinate care across providers: Helps teams see the same information, reducing duplication and missed steps.
Track SDOH screenings and referrals: Captures social needs that affect health and links them to care plans.
Support telehealth and hybrid care models: Allows clinics to provide care beyond the four walls, especially for remote patients.
Generate compliance and grant reports: Saves time during audits and supports ongoing funding.
The goal is simple: help teams work faster and deliver consistent care.
Why EHR Choice Matters for Clinics
The right EHR has a significant impact on daily clinic operations. A well-designed system helps reduce the time staff spend on documentation, allowing providers to focus more on patient care.
It improves follow-ups and reduces no-shows through reminders and task management, while enabling clear, structured care plans that keep teams aligned.
Secure information sharing across departments ensures everyone stays on the same page, and built-in tracking for social needs and community referrals supports whole-person care.
Additionally, modern EHRs facilitate population health monitoring and reporting, simplifying audits and grant requirements. For busy frontline staff, usability is just as important as the features themselves, because an intuitive system reduces friction and enhances overall efficiency.
Features Clinics Should Prioritize in 2025
1. Simple, Clean, and Quick to Use
Clinics need an EHR that feels effortless, one that reduces clicks, offers intuitive screens, supports mobile use for outreach teams, and includes templates aligned with standard visit types. A clean, user-friendly interface minimizes training time and keeps staff focused on patient care rather than navigating the software.
2. Reliable Interoperability
Seamless data exchange is essential as clinics interact daily with labs, pharmacies, specialists, referral networks, and hospitals. Strong support for HL7, FHIR, and modern APIs helps eliminate duplicate data entry, reduce delays, and ensure information flows smoothly across care partners.
3. Customizable Workflows
Every clinic operates differently, so the EHR must be flexible enough to match unique staffing models, programs, and reporting needs. Customizable intake processes, role-based permissions, visit templates, SDOH assessments, and care-plan structures allow the system to adapt to the clinic rather than forcing the clinic to adjust to the software.
4. Built-In SDOH Support
Because housing, food access, transportation, and safety influence clinical outcomes, clinics need workflows that make it easy to screen for, document, and address SDOH. Effective EHRs help teams manage community referrals, track partner responses, and tie SDOH findings directly into care plans supporting whole-person care.
5. Telehealth + Hybrid Care Tracking
Today's care models blend in-person visits with virtual encounters, remote monitoring, and community outreach. EHRs must capture all of these interactions clearly, from telehealth visits and messaging follow-ups to mobile screenings and hybrid programs. This is especially vital for rural and underserved communities where flexible care delivery is essential.
6. Reporting & Compliance
Clinics spend significant time preparing reports for funders, grants, and audits, so the EHR should streamline reporting and ensure accuracy. Tools that enable easy data export, quality metric tracking, audit-trail generation, and structured reporting eliminate the need for manual spreadsheets and save hours during compliance cycles.
Common EHR Pain Points in Clinics
Clinics frequently face recurring challenges with their EHR systems. Data is often scattered across multiple platforms, making it difficult to get a complete view of patient care. Once referrals leave the EHR, there is usually no visibility into their status, disrupting care coordination.
Many systems have limited capabilities for capturing social determinants of health (SDOH), and complex interfaces can slow down documentation, frustrating staff. High training requirements for new employees, extra fees for essential features, and limited reporting tools further complicate workflows. Together, these issues contribute to inefficiencies, workflow delays, and staff burnout, ultimately affecting patient care.
How Pillar Aligns With These Needs
Pillar is structured around community care workflows. Below is how its functionality maps to typical clinic needs:
Workflow Support
- Custom intake flows — Capture relevant patient information efficiently for each program or clinic site.
- Adjustable care plans — Tailor care plans by diagnosis, program, or patient population to ensure personalized care.
- Role-based access — Protect sensitive PHI while giving the right team members appropriate access.
Interoperability
- FHIR, HL7, and API support — Seamlessly share patient data with labs, hospitals, pharmacies, and external systems to reduce double entry and errors.
SDOH + Referrals
- Built-in SDOH screening — Identify social needs that affect health outcomes.
- Resource directory — Quickly connect patients with trusted community partners.
- Referral tracking with status visibility — Monitor referrals in real time to prevent care gaps.
Hybrid Care & Outreach
- Support for events, mobile units, and telehealth visits — Integrate in-person and virtual care, as well as community outreach programs.
Reporting
- Data exports for grants, compliance, and population metrics — Simplify reporting and analysis to save time and maintain accuracy.
These capabilities focus on improving visibility, documentation speed, and team coordination.
Real-World Example
A multisite community clinic previously used three systems (EHR + referral spreadsheet + outreach tracker). After shifting to Pillar:
- Less platform switching — Staff stayed focused on care.
- Clearer referral visibility — Everyone could track status in one place.
- More consistent documentation — Across departments and programs.
- Faster grant reporting — Data exports replaced manual spreadsheets.
This streamlined workflow helped the clinic operate more efficiently without disrupting existing processes.
Comparison: Pillar vs. Typical EHR Features
| Feature | Pillar | Common EHRs |
|---|---|---|
| Custom care workflows | Yes | Varies |
| SDOH + social needs tracking | Yes | Limited |
| Referral visibility | Yes | Often external |
| Telehealth + outreach tracking | Yes | Rare |
| HL7 + FHIR + API support | Yes | Varies |
| Reporting for grants | Built-in | Often manual |
Conclusion
Selecting an EHR is one of the most critical operational decisions a clinic will make. The system you choose affects how quickly staff can document care, how well teams communicate, and how easily patients move through referrals and follow-ups. A strong EHR should reduce friction, support hybrid and community-based care, and provide the structure clinics need to stay compliant and organized.
As care models continue to expand, telehealth, SDOH programs, outreach events, and multi-disciplinary teams' clinics benefit from platforms that adapt to changing workflows rather than locking them into rigid templates. Evaluating usability, interoperability, and real-world workflow fit will help clinics choose a system that supports both daily tasks and long-term population health goals.
In the end, the best EHR is the one that helps your team work more efficiently, communicate clearly, and deliver consistent, coordinated care across every patient touchpoint.
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