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Tech Company Oracle in Talks of Acquiring EHR Vendor Cerner
The health IT industry has long speculated EHR vendor Cerner as fertile ground for a takeover, particularly from major tech companies.
Technology giant Oracle is in talks of acquiring EHR vendor Cerner, according to reporting from The Kansas City Star.
A Wall Street Journal article cites anonymous sources familiar with talks between the two vendors, The Kansas City Star reported. Sources forecast the buyout could be worth $30 billion.
If Oracle, valued at more than $280 billion, acquired the EHR vendor, it would be one of the largest takeovers of the year, according to the Journal.
Cerner helped pioneer the digitization of the nation’s paper records, ultimately evolving into one of the top players in the EHR industry.
Cerner currently employs about 13,000 employees across several campuses in the Kansas City area and 28,000 employees across the globe, The Kansas City Star noted.
While it’s unclear what an acquisition would mean for Cerner’s local workforce, the Kansas City Star said that losing Cerner’s headquarters “would certainly be a big blow to the city.”
The Star explained that cities especially covet headquarters as they provide high-paying jobs and often contribute more to philanthropic pursuits than other employers.
For years, the EHR vendor was defined by growth, but the firm has scaled back its footprint in recent years as it has contemplated how to stay relevant in a time when most of the nation’s healthcare organizations have already shifted from paper-based medical records to EHRs.
While the vendor still provides EHR software, it has been exploring new business lines, especially those that allow it to leverage the massive sets of healthcare data it manages.
In 2018, Neal Shafer became the first outsider to lead Cerner, as the company undertook what he described as a “transformation.” The company laid of thousands of employees in multiple rounds of job cuts and listed several office buildings for sale, including a major complex in Kansas City, that it had opened just five years prior.
With business ties to Amazon, the industry has long speculated Cerner as fertile ground for a takeover, particularly from major technology stakeholders such as Apple, Amazon, and Google. This speculation only intensified when Cerner appointed David Feinberg as its CEO this fall, a medical doctor who previously worked as the vice president of Google Health.