360 KC-area Cerner associates will become employees of client

https://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/news/2019/10/02/cerner-adventist-health-employee-rebadging.html

Cerner Corp. and one of its big clients have swapped employees — again.

On Tuesday, Cerner (Nasdaq: CERN) informed employees working with Adventist Health — including 360 in Kansas City — that they would transition back to the organization as Adventist retakes control of its revenue cycle management. The transition reportedly will occur Nov. 4, with the employees being located at the Realizations Campus. The initial rebadging occurred early last year.

In California, Adventist will transition all its revenue cycle operations to Huron Consulting Group Inc. (Nasdaq: HURN) effective Nov. 4, an Adventist spokeswoman said. Adventist will offer to hire about 1,500 Cerner associates, and Huron plans to hire about 100, she said.

Adventist has offered all affected Cerner employees in the Kansas City area jobs with Adventist Health, a Cerner spokeswoman told the Kansas City Business Journal. In the prior employee swap, Adventist offered employees 60 days to decide whether to switch; Cerner has not said when employees must decide.

Adventist, based in Roseville, Calif., will become responsible for the employees' benefits, and rebadged employees will not have access to Cerner perks.

The move will affect employees in Cerner's IT and revenue management services in Kansas City. It's unclear how many Cerner employees in California will rebadge.

Adventist will lease space so employees can stay in their current location, the spokeswoman said.

Cerner will remain as Adventist Health’s partner for electronic medical record and integrated revenue cycle solutions, the Adventist spokeswoman said.

The faith-based nonprofit health system operates 19 medical centers and more than 280 clinics in California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii, according to its website.

In January 2018, Adventist Health turned the management of its annual revenue over to Cerner and transitioned about 275 jobs at its Roseville headquarters to the North Kansas City-based health IT company. About 70% of those employees worked in clinical IT positions, and the rest handled revenue processing, according to the Sacramento Business Journal.

At the time, Adventist President Bill Wing told the Sacramento Business Journal that he expected Cerner to retain the 275 jobs in the long term, though the nature of the jobs could change as the partnership evolved. Wing also said he expected Adventist's expanded partnership with Cerner to "reduce costs for health care operations and revenue processing by about $300 million over the next three years."