Here are 10 updates on Cerner's operations, software products and partnerships reported by Becker's Hospital Review in January.
Editor's note: The updates are listed in the order they were reported.
1. Cerner Innovation, a subsidiary of the Kansas City, Mo.-based EHR vendor, was granted a patent on Jan. 7 for a device that identifies inadequacies in blood samples before they get processed.
2. Cerner partnered with virtual primary care provider HealthTap to extend its offerings beyond on-site and near-site centers.
3. Cerner's analytics platform Lights on Network on Jan. 14 published study findings including that each patient encounter requires an average of 16 minutes and 14 seconds in EHR use for physicians, including time spent outside of normal working hours.
4. During a Jan. 14 presentation at the 38th annual JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco, Cerner CEO Brent Shafer said the EHR vendor will continue to transform its business strategy in 2020 by redefining its client experience and cementing its position as part of the new cognitive era in healthcare.
5. Cerner retracted its bid to sell a portion of its Kansas City, Mo.-based Innovations Campus to developers for retail and mixed-use after failing to reach an agreement with the Tax Increment Financing Commission of Kansas City.
6. Black Book Research named Cerner the top EHR vendor across all levels of comprehensive hospital technology services.
7. Four former Cerner employees filed a class-action complaint against the EHR vendor for allegedly mismanaging its retirement plan by maintaining expensive investment options that cost participants millions of dollars.
8. Amanda Adkins, vice president of strategic growth at Cerner, is taking a leave of absence from the company while she campaigns for a seat in Congress.
9. Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust experienced EHR downtime on Jan. 28 due to technical issues with its Cerner system.
10. The U.S. Government Accountability Office rejected Nuance Communications' protest of the Department of Veterans Affairs’ $10 billion contract with Cerner, which includes a clinical documentation improvement task order that Nuance claimed should have been bid out separately.