Epic replies to comments made by Cerner CEO Neal Patterson at health conference
11/05/2014 6:52 PM
11/05/2014 7:55 PM
Diane Stafford, stafford@kcstar.com
Cerner Corp. chief executive Neal Patterson took a swipe at a competitor at the annual Cerner Health Conference on Tuesday, calling out a “black hole” among health information technology providers.
Patterson did not refer to Epic, the privately held competitor, by name. But about 11,000 people at the annual conference were clear about his reference. In a sometimes emotional speech about why he works to digitize patient health records, Patterson said it is “immoral” to not have “interoperable” health records that could be shared by multiple hospitals, physicians and other health providers.
Brian Spranger, media spokesman for Epic, provided this response Wednesday:
“Epic is No. 1 for interoperability performance as ranked by actual users surveyed by the highly respected firm KLAS. Epic can interoperate with any other electronic health record that meets government standards, regardless of vendor. We support open standards rather than private platforms such as CommonWell that further privatize and monetize exchange of health information.”
Cerner co-founded the CommonWell Health Alliance, a fee-for-membership venture joined by several large health information technology providers. The alliance says it is “creating and executing a vendor-neutral platform that breaks down the technological and process barriers that currently inhibit effective health data exchange.”
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