Seema Verma, Oracle Health’s executive vice president and general manager, is trying to revitalize a business that is steadily losing market share to Epic Systems and has been faulted for its rocky rollout of a new electronic health record system at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
Verma, who was administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under President Donald Trump, said she is committed to the company despite the unit's results being a drag on the tech company’s profitability. Oracle, which acquired EHR company Cerner for $28.3 billion in 2022, has aspirations in the industry that go well beyond the U.S. acute care hospital EHR market, she said.
Related: Oracle’s $28B Cerner health tech bet sputters with lost customers and slipping sales
Its chief rival, Epic, was the only EHR vendor to increase its market share last year, according to a widely watched report from KLAS Research. Verma said Oracle's plans to build a new EHR are in early stages and will set the company apart. “I don't really think there is anybody that can compete with what we're going to bring to the table,” she said.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Ken Glueck, executive vice president at Oracle, said in a blog post that Epic CEO Judy Faulkner was the single biggest obstacle to EHR interoperability. Do you agree?
When I introduced regulations to promote interoperability, they were in my CMS office telling me what a terrible idea that was. So I know firsthand that they were against that and trying to convince me and the administration that we shouldn't have interoperability.
Epic says it supports interoperability.
They may be now because they were forced to. I think they are doing that now, but they weren't doing that in 2017 or 2018. It took regulations to force them.
How does Oracle Health differentiate itself from its EHR competitors?
Our competitors are using 1990s technology. At Oracle, there is a lot of work we need to do with the current system but we’re rebuilding the whole thing. We’re starting at ground zero with modern technology and it’s going to be safe and it’s going to be secure.
How is the VA project going and what’s your response to the scrutiny of Oracle Health's deal with the agency?
Things are going really well. I think it took some time but with Oracle technology and the Oracle engineering team, we were able to stabilize the system. And we've really seen a lot of improvement. When it comes to government, there should always be transparency. We're not afraid of transparency. I think arguably, there were issues beforehand. I can't speak to what those problems were or why this happened but a lot of that happened under Cerner’s leadership. But since Oracle's taken over, we've definitely seen a marked improvement in services.
What opportunity does Oracle Health see internationally?
When you're looking at countries where there's a single payer that's the government, they’re not just buying an EHR. The EHR may be part of a larger purchase of technology they make. So when we're talking to governments, it's not just about healthcare. It’s about communications. It’s about data centers. There's a lot of infrastructure that these governments are purchasing and we're already doing that. Healthcare becomes another vertical in that regard. We have relationships in those countries, and we have infrastructure already on the ground.
You recently rolled out an artificial intelligence clinical documentation tool. How can you stand out in a crowded space?
Everything that we're going to do is EHR agnostic. These tools can be used by anybody. EHR companies are saying, “Hey we're going to reduce the number of clicks.” And Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison said let's just get rid of all clicks. We thought this AI tool was a really important investment that we needed to make. It's embedded into our system. It's not bolted on as you see in some competitors. In the next year or so, you're going to see tech products coming to the market that are just going to leapfrog the competition.
