Survey: Clients, employees approve of Cerner acquisition of Siemens Healthcare IT

A survey of the current clients of Cerner and Siemens Healthcare’s IT division, as well as employees at both entities, reveal positive feelings about the upcoming acquisition, according to a survey conducted by Black Book Rankings.

In early August, it was announced that Cerner had inked an agreement to acquire Siemen’s health IT unit, which is part of Siemens Health Services, for $1.3 billion in cash.

The recent survey—which was designed to ascertain insider perceptions, employee insights and client experiences—encompassed 249 EHR clients (159 Cerner and 90 Siemens users), and 123 Cerner and 174 Siemens employees that participated in a separate organizational cultural survey. Some of the findings:

• 93 percent of Cerner customers anticipate little to no change in client service satisfaction levels. However, some Siemens' academic medical center clients anticipate the change in vendor ownership could negatively impact Siemens service levels in larger hospitals.

• 100 percent of Cerner clients expect accelerated innovation due to the acquisition—but 22 percent of Siemens large hospital clients are skeptical that the interfacing of medical device and diagnostic technologies with hospital EHR systems would continue at the same rate as was expected before the acquisition.

• More than half of all Siemens clients foresee shifting to Cerner technologies following the acquisition.

• 33 percent of Siemen’s large hospital and academic medical center clients waver on shifting from Siemens to Cerner.

• Post-acquisition, nearly 80 percent of collective Cerner and Siemens clients believe the collaboration will produce high quality population health, clinical decision support and quality reporting products.

• 84 percent of Siemens clients anticipate major improvements in health information exchange, interoperability, revenue cycle management, and EHR from Cerner.

• From the employee surveys, Siemens staffers retained expressed optimism of the job opportunities with Cerner Corporation. 100 percent of surveyed clinicians and nearly 9 in 10 marketing and sales employees expect opportunities for personal career growth with Cerner.

“Siemens and Cerner clients separately and collectively share a strong outlook for increasing Cerner market share, cementing corporate loyalties, and leading the industry in post-EHR era population health innovation through effective use of combined healthcare information technologies,” said Doug Brown, managing partner of Black Book, in a statement.