Upon acquiring Cerner last June, Oracle began laying off "thousands of employees in the unit” as recently as this month, according to a report shared with Business Today.

Oracle reportedly let go over 3,000 employees from the EHR company, (from various teams, including marketing, engineering, and accounting) which it purchased for $28 billion.

For context, the acquisition itself brought in 28,000 Cerner employees, almost 10 times as many as have reportedly been dismissed.

The report said Oracle has “not issued raises or granted promotions, and earlier this year announced that workers shouldn’t expect any through 2023."

When the acquisition was announced, Oracle put forth plans to modernize Cerner’s systems with its Autonomous Database, APEX low-code development tools and voice-enabled user interface, and move them into its Gen2 Cloud platform. These changes are intended to help providers with treatment decisions and reduce IT infrastructure costs.

"This can be done very quickly because Cerner's largest business and most important clinical system already runs on the Oracle Database," said Mike Sicilia, executive vice president of industries at Oracle, in a statement at the time. "We also will make Cerner's systems much easier to learn and use by making hands-free voice technology the primary interface to Cerner's clinical systems."

Systems running on the Gen2 Cloud are available 24/7 and constantly monitoring their environments to avoid unplanned downtime. Only authorized personnel can access data on them.

In April, the Department of Veterans Affairs announced it was halting the rollout of its Oracle Cerner EHR system as part of a major reset of its modernization project to address the multiple issues that have plagued staff and clinicians at sites where the solution has already been installed.

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