Oracle reportedly making job cuts at health IT arm Cerner

Oracle is set to make a number of job cuts at Cerner, the electronic health records company it acquired last year, as its shift workloads to its cloud infrastructure. Big Red paid $28 billion for Cerner in June, promising an expansion of its health sector of activity. However, a report from Bloomberg suggests that Oracle has …

[TVU]

"However, a report from Bloomberg suggests that Oracle has begun a round of layoffs in an effort to reduce costs"

Notwithstanding the move to cloud infrastructure, fewer staff very rarely, if ever, means a better service. Existing and potential new customers of Cerner ought perhaps to take note of this latest Oracle move with a view to making alternative arrangements.

[Anonymous Coward]

Really?

It is absolutely normal for an acquired company to shed HR, Marketing, and Legal people when the larger company already has all of those posts covered.

[dharmOS]

Sadly it is very difficult for a hospital to migrate off an electronic healthcare record (EHR) to a rival product. The main alternative is EPIC, and that would be a “frying pan to fire” alternative. I have used Cerner in the past, and still use EPIC now.

The data is locked away in a proprietary format (done somewhat deliberately) and changing product often involves running both EHRs in parallel with new data entered in the new EHR and the old one run to access previous data for a patient.

An Integration Engine can decrease some of the human user burden (for doctor, nurse etc) to have to load both products to look at a patient’s health record for old and new information. Either way, costs increase over sticking with just the one product.

[Doctor Syntax]

Our patients

Larry Ellison said: “As we move our Cerner patients ..."

Is that Larry Ellison MD?

[Handlebars]

Re: Our patients

It makes more sense to say clients here, but patients is not entirely wrong since patients' records are being moved across.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Our patients

I just read that as MD = Meglomania Disorder?