Becker's Hospital Review

27 CIO / HEALTH IT The effect of Oracle Cerner layoffs By Naomi Diaz E HR vendor Oracle Cerner has conducted its second lay off as part of Oracle's new "restructuring plan" that aims to save the company $927 million by the end of fiscal 2023. In August, Oracle, which finalized its acquisition of Cerner in June, said it was considering a $1 billion cost reduction effort, which in- cluded eliminating thousands of jobs. e workforce reduction affected Cerner employees, but Oracle did not mention how many employees would be laid off as part of the move. On March 16, the company said it would be conducting its second round of layoffs, and was planning to enforce an in-office mandate for the remaining Cerner employees. e employee's have been working remotely for about three years. e number of employees affected by this most recent move was also not disclosed, but Oracle said the layoffs were a part of another re- structuring plan to save costs. e layoffs have been affecting how health systems and hospitals have been perceiving the EHR vendor, according to a March 21 KLAS Re- search report. KLAS surveyed more than 20 Oracle Cerner customers throughout 2022, when Oracle took over ownership of Cerner. In November, about a fourth reported that they no longer saw the EHR vendor as a viable long-term partner, with health systems of 1,000 or more beds being more likely to switch opinions. Twenty-nine percent also cited Cerner's staffing availability as one of their main concerns. Oracle Cerner did not respond to Becker's request for comment. n A return to 'realism': What types of CIOs companies are hiring By Giles Bruce Companies are increasingly looking for CIOs with a focus on the basics as IT budgets have tightened, The Wall Street Journal reported April 24. Executive recruiters told the newspaper that firms want tech leaders who can deliver on things like uptime, cybersecurity and cost optimization, rather than drive transformational change, during a time when there's less appetite for risk. "Many of the aspirational goals are being reconsidered, and rightly so — it's forcing organizations to figure out how to get the basics right," Paul Groce, a partner and the CIO practice leader at executive search company Leathwaite, told the Journal. "There's a certain amount of realism that's entered the conversation." Starting in the late 2010s, some companies invested in innovative customer-facing services while neglecting some of the core systems that make IT networks run effectively, according to the story. CIO pay is also growing slower, with median salaries increasing 10 percent from 2021 to 2022, compared to 21 percent the year prior, staffing agency Mondo found. n How CIOs can improve environmental sustainability By Giles Bruce C IOs' decisions can go a long way toward improving the environmental sustainability of their organiza- tions, CIO reported. "Like anything, the hard work is the initial assessment," Sean Sadler, director of business consulting at CGI and an advi- sor to CIOs, told the news outlet. "From a technology per- spective, you need to look at the infrastructure, where it's applied, how much energy it draws, and then how it fits into the overall sustainability scheme." That kind of data analysis can also reduce the reliance on consultants, according to the April 20 story. Energy costs could be lowered by extracting greater value from enterprise cloud computing estates, application work- loads and system code, and using or returning to on-prem- ise technology, the news outlet reported. Seventy percent of business tech leaders say technology plays a critical role in sustainability, a 2022 report by CIO recruitment firm Nash Squared found. n

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