An interesting follow up on last month’s rampant speculation of an Oracle Health sale. Bloomberg News’ Brody Ford broke the news coursing through Reddit’s Oracle threads last week about the departure of two more Oracle Health executives, SVP Product Management for Clinical and Healthcare AI Suhas Uliyar and EVP of Health and AI Sanga Viswanathan. This follows on three earlier departures at the SVP level: Quais Taraki, general manager of Oracle Health and AI; Ofer Michael, cloud product development; and Max Romanenko, engineering for Oracle Health and AI. The departures of Messrs. Uliyar and Viswanathan have not been publicly disclosed by Oracle; the reporting is from internal sources. Oracle did not comment to Mr. Ford on these departures. Becker’s Hospital/Health IT
What they all had in common, according to Mr. Ford’s report, was that all five were long-time, senior leaders in Oracle’s cloud infrastructure areas, and had specifically been transferred to modernize the 2022 $28 billion bet to “transform healthcare” that was second-place EHR Cerner. Mr. Uliyar in fact had dual positions in Health and in the OCI cloud platform. Messrs. Taraki and Romanenko have since gone to EDB, a database software and AI company.
Mr. Ford’s article goes into greater detail, such as Larry Ellison, Oracle’s 81-year-old (but still quite active) CEO with a passion for longevity research, stating that Oracle had almost completely rewritten Cerner’s software code and had expanded into other hospital systems including accounting and HR. Read his post on LinkedIn. Article for Bloomberg subscribers here.
Again, it is well known that Oracle purchased the antique EHR that was Cerner in order to sell other Oracle systems into the hospital and large healthcare system market, plus to increase its foothold into the Federal government through the VA and MHS EHR modernization contracts. Our Readers know how that has fared: MHS, with Leidos in a smaller system transitioning from AHLTA, has succeeded, while the far larger VA EHRM, transitioning from VistA, has struggled spectacularly. [TTA 8 Feb latest update]
Oracle’s success with health systems hasn’t been stellar. According to KLAS in a 21 August 2025 premium report (while your Editor was on leave), Oracle Health has lost 57 acute care customers since 2022, including 12 health systems with more than 1,000 beds. Other findings were equally unattractive. In other words, falling behind. From KLAS:
Oracle Health has made big promises but has not enhanced the customer experience.Customers report that communication has been lacking and that the vendor partnership has declined.Several large, well-known customers have left Oracle Health.Clinical AI Agent has caught customers’ attention as the first among recently promised enhancement to be delivered.Customers still have lingering questions about Oracle Health’s road map.
Quoted from Becker’s Health IT’s report:
About half of those interviewed told KLAS they would not buy the EHR again.Customers cited improvements in code quality and were optimistic about Oracle Health’s Clinical AI Agent, which they say has reduced documentation time and allowed physicians to see more patients each day. Early adopters of the tool described it as a meaningful advance, though broader adoption is still in its early stages.KLAS found mixed reactions to other new and updated products, such as Oracle Health’s revamped EHR and its patient accounting system, RevElate. Some leaders described these efforts as promising, while others expressed skepticism about their ability to address long-standing challenges.
Strictly anecdotal, but when this Editor attended last month’s HealthIMPACT, it was a given that Epic was the hospital system that was the standard, and Oracle Health had fallen away somewhere in the mists. It wasn’t a Hertz and Avis rivalry anymore.
So what does this scatter of tea leaves mean? Returning to Mr. Ford’s article, Oracle expects Oracle Health bookings and revenue to accelerate in 2026, based on a December earnings call. Mike Sicilia, who is co-CEO, is the face on the calls, but from early 2024, Seema Verma has been general manager and EVP of Oracle Health, reporting to Mr. Sicilia–and has been notably quiet. Remaining in the mix is Oracle Health’s product development head, Oracle veteran TK Anand. One can imagine the pressure on both of them to sell the heck out of the updated EHR and associated systems, especially new ones such as documentation and accounting.
Fun fact: Mr. Ellison, co-founder of Oracle, remains its largest individual shareholder with about 40% of common stock, and his cash flow is dependent on Oracle dividends even though Oracle is ‘torching through cash’ to finance AI datacenters. Yahoo Finance
But ditching five senior managers, long time techs with deep knowledge of Oracle cloud and product development, either indicates that their ‘job is done’ — or something else. Why do rumors of layoffs persist when major problems with health systems cluster around communication and partnership? Why when the VA EHRM, which required tremendous fixes, where lack of communication and contacts were repeatedly cited in the VA’s OIG and Federal GAO reports, is about to go into rollout?
Is there a turnaround in the offing for Oracle Health?
Or has Larry Ellison’s focus moved towards AI and building out datacenters for OpenAI, Meta, and Nvidia?
Has Ellison tired of pouring more cash into a second-place EHR? Has it served its purpose in getting healthcare data? Is Oracle Health, in parts or wholly, being leaned out in preparation for sale or spinoff to finance datacenters? Stay tuned….