Oracle Cut 3,000 Jobs At Cerner Since Acquisition, Halted Raises This Year: Report

Oracle has laid off thousands of employees and halted promotions and raises at Cerner since it acquired the health information technology company, a new report revealed.

More than 3,000 Cerner employees have lost their jobs since Oracle completed its acquisition of the company in June 2022, a source told Insider in a story published this week.

Insider talked to four current and former employees, who revealed that the layoffs affected a wide range of departments.

A former employee said layoffs that occurred as recently as this month hit marketing, legal, engineering, product and accounting units. Two of the sources told the outlet that the company has halted promotions and earlier this year, told staff that they shouldn't expect any raises or promotions throughout the year.

As a result of the mass layoffs that hit Cerner's original workforce of 28,000 staffers, morale at the workplace was "terrible," a former Cerner executive revealed.

Aside from layoffs that hurt employee morale at Cerner, leadership turnover has also been significant since the acquisition, the report added.

A former employee familiar with the situation said then-CEO Dr. David Feinberg was sidelined to perform a largely "ceremonial" role. Feinberg was hired to lead Cerner before Oracle acquired the company.

This is not the first time Cerner is reported to have had layoffs.

In March, multiple people with direct knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg that workers were informed about their positions being eliminated. The exact number of affected employees is unknown.

Marketing and creative services units were the hardest hit in the March layoffs, the outlet reported.

Layoffs aren't the only problems at Cerner as the company was recently embroiled in a contract issue with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). VA officials previously announced that the deployment of Cerner's electronic health records (EHRs) would be halted until repeated problems related to the EHRs on five VA sites.

Officials at the VA have since agreed to extend its EHRs contract with Cerner after new safeguards were pledged by the Oracle health IT arm for the billion-dollar project.

It is unclear when Oracle started layoffs at Cerner. However, some comments on a Cerner layoffs thread at the anonymous layoffs discussion board TheLayoff in August 2022 suggested that there may have been workforce reductions weeks after the company was acquired.

A commenter who said he was a Technical Project Manager in Pop Health wrote in August 2022 that he was laid off but will get severance pay and will still be paid for the 60 days "until the official termination" even if he "won't be doing any work until then."

In the same month, another commenter wrote that a senior vice president revealed layoffs were coming and the cuts will affect a diverse range of employees. "Doesn't matter if your old, young, experienced, inexperienced, there is no rhyme or reason how they go about cutting they are just cutting," the commenter wrote at the time.

The Information also reported in August last year that Oracle job cuts started at the company's U.S. offices, affecting some employees in the San Francisco Bay area.

The outlet further reported at the time that the layoffs would hit some global offices including those in India, Canada and Europe. The outlet previously reported that the cloud behemoth was looking to cut costs of up to $1 billion and the cost-cutting strategy may include the loss of thousands of jobs.

In November, Oracle said it was shutting down two Cerner campuses in Kansas City, Missouri: the Cerner North Kansas City World headquarters and the Realization Campus near Interstate 435.

The parking lots of the said campuses were empty on the day the closures were announced, ABC-affiliated KMBC-TV reported at the time.

Cloud giant Oracle completed its acquisition of Cerner in June 2022 for $28 billion.

"Combining Cerner's clinical capabilities with Oracle's enterprise platform, analytics, and automation expertise will change health and wellness in a way that simply hasn't been possible before," Oracle executive vice president of industries Mike Sicilia wrote of the merger at the time.

Meanwhile, Cerner's Careers corner on its website still has dozens of open jobs listed, including technical, support and even learning designer listings. Many of the job openings are listed for Cerner's India and France offices.