https://mailchi.mp/ce4d4e40f714/the-weekly-gist-june-10-2022?e=d1e747d2d8

Kansas City, MO-based electronic health record (EHR) company Cerner is now a business unit within Oracle, the Austin, TX-based software behemoth. Oracle, which already sells some software to insurers, hospitals, and public health departments, called Cerner the company’s “anchor asset”, and hopes to use it to expand its healthcare presence. Oracle co-founder and board chair Larry Ellison unveiled lofty plans to create a national health records database, but he didn’t detail how the company would get access to health records from non-Cerner systems, as interoperability standards haven’t been fully implemented.

The Gist: In addition to the challenge of entering the complex EHR and healthcare data market, Oracle now faces the challenge of rebuilding Cerner’s growth, and its clients’ confidence. Cerner lags Epic in terms of hospital market share: Epic holds about a third of the US hospital market, compared to Cerner’s 24 percent. Epic gained an additional 74 hospitals last year, compared to Cerner’s five.

Anecdotally, we know of several long-term Cerner health system clients who are either in the middle of, or planning for, a transition to Epic, which is seen by health system leaders as the superior EMR option. (In the words of one executive, “No CEO ever got fired for choosing Epic.”) If a stronger Cerner product emerges as a result of the acquisition, it could help to stem this tide.