The layoffs follow recent cuts in the Bay Area and within Oracle’s cloud infrastructure division. At the same time, a new KLAS report reveals mixed feedback from the company’s healthcare clients.
Reports indicate that on Sept. 2, Oracle issued layoff notices to an undisclosed number of employees, many of whom joined the company through its 2021 acquisition of Cerner.
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
Local outlet KMBC 9 reported that several Oracle employees in the company’s Kansas City offices—formerly Cerner’s headquarters—were issued layoff notices on Tuesday. The report noted that at least two independent sources confirmed the cuts.
Oracle has not yet commented on the layoffs. We have requested a statement and will update if one is provided.
In recent weeks, social media discussions and news reports have pointed to broader workforce reductions, particularly in Oracle’s cloud infrastructure and IT support teams. The Silicon Valley Business Journal also reported that about 300 employees in California were let go.
At the same time, new research from KLAS examined Oracle Health’s performance three years after the Cerner acquisition. Many healthcare providers expressed dissatisfaction with customer support, and some large health systems have since moved to other vendors.
“Oracle inherited a dissatisfied customer base,” KLAS researchers wrote. “Despite making big promises, the company has not improved the customer experience.” According to the report, Oracle Health has lost 57 acute care customers over the past three years, including 12 major health systems with more than 1,000 beds.
Still, not all feedback was negative. Some respondents expressed optimism about new artificial intelligence capabilities in Oracle’s EHR. In particular, they highlighted the Clinical AI Agent as a promising first step among upcoming enhancements.
In the first quarter of this year, participants in the study reported a clear improvement in their perception of Oracle Health’s long-term vision, with KLAS researchers noting that “optimism has reached its highest point in three years” for the vendor.
“Almost all respondents currently using Oracle Health’s Clinical AI Agent expressed strong satisfaction, describing it as a valuable tool that can be applied across various clinical environments,” the researchers wrote. “Early adopters emphasized its potential to simplify workflows and deliver relevant, real-time insights, with many eager to broaden its use.”
In addition to the rollout of the promised AI capabilities, respondents also pointed to stronger code quality in the company’s more recent software releases.
BROADER CONTEXT
After acquiring Cerner for $28 billion and bringing on 28,000 employees when the deal closed in 2022, Oracle has since shut down multiple offices—including two in Kansas City—and cut roughly 5,000 jobs in the area.
While the company’s push toward expanded use of AI, including its new AI-driven EHR designed to boost efficiency, enhance clinical care, and lower costs, is thought to be one contributing factor, another possible driver is Oracle’s ongoing challenges with a costly and troubled federal contract.
Hundreds of Oracle Health staff have already felt the impact of problems tied to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ EHR Modernization Program, which triggered financial penalties in 2023.
The Government Accountability Office noted in a February report that life cycle cost estimates for the VA project range from the VA’s $16.1 billion figure to an outside estimate of $49.8 billion.
Oracle has argued that accelerating EHR deployments is essential to help rein in costs, telling lawmakers earlier this year that it had achieved key milestones during the lengthy pause in system rollouts initiated in 2023—a pause that has since ended.
AI has also been highlighted as a potential solution to help get the VA’s EHR project back on track. Seema Verma, executive vice president of Oracle Health and Oracle Life Sciences, said the company is investing in automation to speed up the testing phase of the new EHR by cutting down on manual testing, onboarding, and training.
“Automation allows every deployment to be fully tested in less time, enabling us to handle a greater number of rollouts simultaneously without sacrificing quality,” Verma said.
OFFICIAL COMMENT
“Oracle Health has gone through multiple restructurings and lost significant talent,” a healthcare CIO told KLAS in its 2025 report. “It feels like many of their experienced implementation specialists are gone. We’ve had to re-explain numerous issues, and many of their proposed solutions haven’t been effective. The challenges largely stem from the level of talent now involved.”
