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Public Sector IT

Cover-up allegations after Cerner installation

Tony Collins

There are allegations of a cover-up and mismanagement in Illinois after officials bought a $16.1m billing system from Cerner for Chicago’s Public Health department.

The claims are that officials did not bill for money owed to them and, as a result, lost millions in state funding, which led to staff being sacked and thousands of patients being shut out of care.

It appears that the problems were more due to mismanagement of the system by officials rather than any specific fault of the Cerner system. Which could help to explain the allegations of a cover-up.


It’s unfortunate that some Cerner implementations are becoming associated with cover-up allegations. My FOI request to Barts about its Cerner system has been acknowledged; and Barts has told me it is taking extra time to consider my request but I have had no information yet, although my request is now about six weeks old.

Homerton, a Cerner site, is remarkably secretive about its Board discussions on Cerner; and there have been claims of censorship of criticisms of Cerner in Australia.

It could be that Cerner’s success in the public sector market means it is bound to get some flak when projects go wrong. Or it could be that its wish for confidentiality will hinder the full truth emerging when things do go wrong.

Mental health blunder continues – Progress Illinois

Call for investigation over Mental Health project – Progress Illinois

Lessons from troubled Cerner go-live at Nuffield – IT Projects Blog

Claim of censorship over Cerner paper – IT Projects Blog

UCL comment on Tory NPfIT plans – Chime blog

Homerton rejects FOI Cerner request – IT Projects Blog 

Cerner wins legal case – Kansas City Star

State sweetens Cerner deal – 49news

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So let's review - nothing directly related to Cerner but rether mis-management on the part of the City Managers.

How then is that relevant to the readers of a UK IT Projects Blog? Apart from the general anti-Cerner feeling that seeps through this column.

Good news stories really don't sell do they? (Kingston, Newcastle for example)

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So let's review - nothing directly related to Cerner but rether mis-management on the part of the City Managers.

How then is that relevant to the readers of a UK IT Projects Blog? Apart from the general anti-Cerner feeling that seeps through this column.

Good news stories really don't sell do they? (Kingston, Newcastle for example)

Cancel
I believe we learn more from what goes wrong than from success stories. There's not much we learn from watching aircraft landing safely, but there's usually heaps to be learned from air accident reports.

Learning from crashes has made air travel remarkably safe.

In health IT, my criticism is often of excessive secrecy which stops mistakes being identified.

Things have gone well with some Cerner implementations but in some cases patient care and treatment has been affected and the truth has not emerged. The same mistakes have been repeated at various NHS sites.

My health IT pieces are sometimes not simply about project and technology rights and wrongs: they are about people not getting the care they're entitled to, often because of a mixture of poor management, politics and unnecessary secrecy. Technology usually gets the blame but the problems are nearly always avoidable.

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