Cerner is a public company from Kansas City, Mo. It provides hardware, health IT solutions, software and devices to a significant percentage of Healthcare providers within and outside of America. Cerner has seen its share of highs and lows in the market since its launch in ‘79. Here are a few things to know about this Health tech giant:
1. Founded in 1979 by Neal Patterson, Paul Gorup, and Cliff Illig who formerly used to be colleagues at Arthur Anderson. At the time, it was titled PGI and Associates which soon was changed to Cerner when they launched its first system in the mid 80s. Their client base grew rapidly and within five years. Their system PathNet was running at 250+ sites by 1990. At present, the company has almost 28,000 employees in over 35 countries, around the world. Neal Patterson served as CEO and board chairman for 37 years until he was diagnosed with tissue cancer in 2016. However, he still vowed to stay involved in company matters. after his demise in 2017, Brent Shafer was appointed at his position in 2018 while Mr. Illig serves as the vice chairman of the board, to date.
2. Cerner is among the largest open-traded companies in the world with its net worth summing up to $18.5 Billion. In 2015, it was named second the highest-earning EHR vendors with a revenue of $4.4 Billion. Facing a huge boost after acquiring Siemens. Cerner, at the time, held the largest shares of 23.73% in the Health IT market amount to a staggering $27 Billion. Their customer loyalty rating shot up from 88% in 2015 to 96% committed in 2016 and was named among the topmost loyal EHR vendors by physicians.
3. Hospitals corporations named Cerner the #1 EHR for hospitals. Cerner is also ranked the highest in nurse satisfaction. The same year, Black Book surveys for Inpatient EHRs found that 95 percent of its customers advocate for companions to use Cerner. Medicare HER Incentive program reported Cerner to be the most-used certified EHR vendor running in more than one thousand hospitals.
4. Launched in March of 2016, Cerner faced a great deal of backlash from the Vancouver Island Health Authority. Due to poor implementation, many providers refused to use the system and regressed to the old paper documentation. Many complaints were made regarding the unreliability of the system including data loss, problems in the retrieval of reports and glitches that automatically changed medication records which lead to great disruption in the hospitals. Cerner has a history of many controversies surrounding the company's refusal to pay employees overtime wages leading to many lawsuits. In 2001, a memo sent out to hundreds of Cerner employees by the CEO was leaked which stirred massive backlash towards Neal Patterson and the company for using harsh language and threats of freezing hiring, layoffs, and to pull back facilities from employees.
5. Cerner scored the US Department of Defense contract in 2015 with 4.3 billion for the agency’s healthcare management modernization program which is expected to go live by 2023. The new EHR system by Cerner will hold around 200,000 military health records and 9.5 million of the department’s legacies, claims DoD. As of 2015, Cerner had replaced the DoD’s beneficiary health IT systems in over 50 hospitals in 350 clinics spread out in several locations including, submarines and ships and the U.S military operations, around the world. In 2017, the state government granted Cerner a sole-source contract to take place of the VA's heritage VistA stage with the organization's lead EHR system, Cerner Millennium.
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