Kansas City’s Cerner Corp. completes second round of layoffs in recent months
Cerner Corp. has cut 130 jobs from its workforce, including 60 in the Kansas City area.
Tuesday’s round of layoffs was the second in about two months. The North Kansas City-based healthcare IT firm laid off 255 workers in early September.
A spokesperson confirmed the reductions to The Star on Tuesday. All affected workers will receive a severance package.
Cerner is the Kansas City area’s largest private employer with some 14,000 workers on campuses across the metro.
Even with the layoffs, Cerner officials have committed to continue growing employment in Kansas City: they say the firm has hired several thousand local workers this year.
The company continues building out its Innovations Campus, which is east of Interstate 435 and stretches from 87th to 95th streets.
But the job cuts speak to broader changes for the company, which initially pioneered the work of digitizing the nation’s paper health records. That domestic market has largely completed the move away from paper records and Cerner and its competitors have saturated the market.
That has pushed Cerner to look for ways to diversify its business model and executives are participating with third-party consultants in an exhaustive review of all current operations.
The company recently notified federal regulators that Cerner Chief Operating Office Mike Nill will step down at the beginning of next year. The 23-year veteran is among three top executives to leave in recent months.
