Press Release Details

Ardent Health to participate in HealthStream’s ECWP Innovation Partners Program

NASHVILLE, Tenn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep. 14, 2026-- HealthStream (Nasdaq: HSTM), a leading healthcare technology platform company for clinical workforce solutions, today defined the Enterprise Clinical Workforce Platform (ECWP), establishing a new enterprise category for healthcare built on a single, verified record for every clinician. For decades, health systems have standardized on two enterprise systems: the electronic health record (EHR) for the clinical record and enterprise resource planning (ERP) for finance and resources. The Enterprise Clinical Workforce Platform defines the third. In connection with the launch, HealthStream has formed the ECWP Innovation Partners Program with Ardent Health (NYSE: ARDT) participating as an early health system partner providing input as the program develops.

The clinical workforce ranks among the highest priorities on any health system’s agenda and among its most significant expenditures. In the American College of Healthcare Executives’ most recent annual survey of hospital CEOs, workforce challenges ranked as a top concern — a position they have held for several consecutive years. The functions that support it have long been managed through a patchwork of point-solution applications rather than a unified, interoperable system. The EHR was built for the patient record and the ERP for financial and material resources; neither was designed to recruit, onboard, credential, schedule, develop, engage, and retain the workforce. The clinical workforce has not yet had an enterprise system of its own that is fully dedicated to the large expanse of integrated workforce solutions — until now.

Defining the category. The Enterprise Clinical Workforce Platform (ECWP) is the single, integrated platform a health system uses to manage its clinical workforce across the entire employee lifecycle. The market-leading ECWP is HealthStream's hStream^®, five years in the making and built on the single clinical verified record for every clinician. Just as every health system selects an EHR and an ERP, HealthStream believes every health system will need to decide on an enterprise clinical workforce platform. The ECWP elevates workforce strategy to the same enterprise standing as the clinical record and the financial backbone and makes it a deliberate C-suite decision rather than a collection of disconnected point solutions.

“Health systems have long standardized on an EHR and an ERP, but the clinical workforce — the single greatest driver of both cost and care quality — has never had a consolidated enterprise platform of its own,” said Robert A. Frist, Jr., Chief Executive Officer, HealthStream. “With the Enterprise Clinical Workforce Platform, we are defining a new category so leaders can make it an enterprise decision. It pairs that platform with a consultative, executive-level partnership focused on the business objectives our customers are accountable for. We are excited to collaborate with Ardent Health through our ECWP Innovation Partners Program as we continue shaping what comes next.”

More than a platform. The Enterprise Clinical Workforce Platform is delivered as a strategic relationship, not simply a product. HealthStream works alongside the C-suite — beginning with each organization’s workforce objectives rather than a set of modules — to align strategy and execution across the clinical workforce. The platform is the engine that operationalizes that work; the partnership is what advances the organization’s goals.

Built to advance the C-suite’s most pressing workforce priorities. The Enterprise Clinical Workforce Platform begins with the business objectives leaders are accountable for and connects the work of the workforce directly to those outcomes. This can include, for example:

• Faster time-to-revenue and readiness — shortening time-to-revenue for newly hired physicians and other clinical staff, and speeding nurse onboarding to validated competency.
• Automated compliance and clinical readiness — automating and standardizing compliance tracking and clinical readiness across the workforce, purpose-built for clinical requirements rather than a generic HR compliance module.
• Competency-informed scheduling (on the roadmap) — matching clinicians’ validated clinical competencies to scheduling decisions to optimize care quality.
• More effective clinical recruiting — connecting workforce needs, candidate qualifications, and verified credentials to help identify and advance the right clinical talent more efficiently.
• Lower total cost of ownership — consolidates vendors to reduce spend, and every additional ECWP solution a health system adopts lowers the price of the rest; discounts apply across the organization, including contracts already in place.

Developing and retaining nurses is at the core. Nursing is the largest segment of the clinical workforce and its greatest retention challenge — a defining priority for the ECWP. The Enterprise Clinical Workforce Platform offers Jane®, HealthStream’s patented, AI-powered solution that measures clinical judgment and personalizes competency development — matching each nurse’s demonstrated clinical competencies to the demands of their unit and patient population, and curating individualized development where gaps exist. The result is a clearer path to competence, stronger clinical judgment at the bedside, and a more engaged, more resilient nursing workforce.

For the CIO: one platform, fewer point solutions. The Enterprise Clinical Workforce Platform (ECWP) lets health systems consolidate the many single-point applications they have accumulated for onboarding, credentialing, competency, scheduling, and development into one interoperable foundation. For technology leaders focused on interoperability, vendor consolidation, and total cost of ownership, the ECWP replaces a fragmented set of tools with one platform that integrates with the systems of record already in place, including the EHR and ERP via bi-directional APIs on a single verified person record.

An early collaborator. Ardent Health, a leading provider of healthcare in growing mid-sized urban communities across the United States with 30 acute care hospitals and more than 280 sites of care and over 1,700 affiliated providers across six states, is participating in the ECWP Innovation Partners Program as an early health system collaborator. Ardent will provide feedback on HealthStream’s development of the ECWP and share perspective on key clinical workforce objectives, including developing, deploying, and retaining clinical teams.

“Our people are the foundation of everything we do, and our ability to find, develop and retain strong clinical teams is central to delivering high-quality care in the communities we serve,” said Cheryl Chisholm, Chief People Officer, Ardent Health. “We appreciate the opportunity to share our perspective with HealthStream as it continues to support clinical workforce priorities across health systems.”

To learn more about HealthStream's Enterprise Clinical Workforce Platform, visit http://www.healthstream.com.

About HealthStream

HealthStream (Nasdaq: HSTM) is the healthcare industry’s largest ecosystem of platform-delivered clinical workforce solutions that empowers healthcare professionals to do what they do best: deliver excellence in patient care. For more information, visit http://www.healthstream.com.

About Ardent Health

Ardent Health (NYSE: ARDT) is a leading provider of healthcare in growing mid-sized urban communities across the U.S. The Company delivers care through its subsidiaries, which include 30 acute care hospitals and more than 280 sites of care with over 2,000 employed and affiliated providers across six states. Anchored by a shared operating model and a commitment to investing in innovative services and technologies that improve quality, access and experience, Ardent is focused on delivering strong clinical outcomes and improving the health of the patients and communities it serves.

This press release includes certain forward-looking statements (statements other than solely with respect to historical fact) that involve risks and uncertainties regarding HealthStream. These statements are based upon management’s beliefs, as well as assumptions made by and data currently available to management. This information has been provided in reliance on the “safe harbor” provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. HealthStream cautions that forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause actual results, performance, or achievements to be materially different from future results, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, including as the result of risks referenced in HealthStream’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025, filed on Feb. 27, 2026, and in HealthStream’s other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission from time to time. HealthStream undertakes no obligation to update or revise any such forward-looking statements.

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Mollie Condra, Ph.D.
Head, Investor Relations &
Corporate Communications
HealthStream, Inc.
(615) 301-3237
mollie.condra@healthstream.com

Source: HealthStream