Oracle closes $28.3b Cerner buy amid warnings of commercial challenges

Oracle has closed the acquisition of Cerner Corporation, a specialist in healthcare software, in a deal set to be worth $28.3 billion. But as Larry Ellison, Oracle's chairman of the board and chief technology officer, is set to outline Oracle's strategy for its acquisition's role in healthcare in the coming days, Cerner …

[Duncan Macdonald]

Time for Cerner customers to jump ship

Given Oracle's record on "customer service" and audits it does not make sense for any Cerner customer to stay with Cerner.

[RobLang]

"move them to the Gen2 Cloud, which he said could be done quickly"

"Quickly" compared to? Glacial basal sliding?

[Thomas Martin]

It will be interesting to see what Oracle/Cerner does with the VA VistA EHR replacement

It has been in t news lately on several online blogs that Cerner has not done well with replacing the Veterans Administration VistA EHR. They appear to have missed deadlines and had many other problems, including their data systems going down on multiple occasions, creating an outage that affected many sites. But don't take my word, this news is available online. Now Oracle has inherited this debacle.

Meanwhile, VistA, which was voted best EHR in the USA, continues to be developed and continues to provide daily, dependable service to the Veterans. VistA had and is still estimated to have about a 99% uptime. VistA support personnel don't do dumb things like updating software with no contingency if it goes belly up.

Read:

https://ehrintelligence.com/news/cerner-system-upgrade-causes-period-of-ehr-downtime-at-az-hospital.

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/ehrs/va-cerner-to-testify-about-problems-regarding-its-ehr-rollout.html

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/ehrs/congressman-rips-cerner-va-software-issues-demands-immediate-moves-to-remedy.html

https://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2022/04/lawmakers-quiz-va-cerner-staff-major-ehr-problems/366191/

You will not read such things about VistA.

Also seen online is that Oracle/Cerner quoted the US government between 10 BILLION and 16 BILLION dollars and ten years to do all necessary to convert the VA sites to their "off-the-shelf" product. That term means you take it, load it and go with it. They have a LONG WAY TO GO to provide the special things Veterans require. IMHO there is NO SYSTEM worth that much.

I managed and programmed VistA for 33 years and my vote will be for it, hands down, for the best EHR, ad infinitum. VistA will be running the VA health care for a long time to come and running circles around you-know-who.

[Happytodiscuss]

Re: It will be interesting to see what Oracle/Cerner does with the VA VistA EHR replacement

I looked around VistA's system assisted by a company that wanted to add remote medicine, outside client intake, and outside billing to VistA years ago now, and have to agree that an Oracle - Cerner choice is a far removed second place from VistA.

One reason for staying with Cerner will be hospital board inertia and lack of technical familiarity (IT hospital board members are not doctors and therefore plebian) and functional knowledge (do doctors even understand how hospitals work) of VistA. Another reason to choose Cerner is the prestige of owning a system from Oracle (honestly that's the way some hospital executives think).

Hospital staff begrudgingly accept or happily embrace VistA for its comprehensive coverage of any hospital, not just the VA.

Its also more secure out of the box at least partly due to its architecture having been ported from a System 38 to MUMPS and C. VistA should be the hospital application that resides in the cloud and sold as a services to smaller, more vulnerable hospitals to hacking.

However, decision makers being doctors...

[Anonymous Coward]

Craig Guarante seeing things positively as ever. Oracle Cerner plans to combine enterprise technology with clinical expertise to transform the health care industry from a public health official, health care provider, and patient perspective. I'd have thought existing Cerner customers would be delighted.