Cerner vs Sunquest

[NANCY AUGENSTEIN]

We may be changing from Sunquest to Cerner. Has anyone compared or used both? We currently have a Provue and do perform electronic crossmatches.

[tbostock]

I have used both; same boat as you...I used Sunquest for many years at my previous hospital, and am now working at another hospital which has Cerner. Since you already use Sunquest, I'm sure you are familiar with it's shortcomings, but the two things it did much better than Cerner:

Tech support: Sunquest was great, answer usually came within the day. With Cerner you will wait days or even weeks to get an answer...infuriating.

Reports: Much better with Sunquest. The Cerner ones are pretty basic, unless you want to pay lots of money to get better custom reports.

Cerner has some advantages over Sunquest:

Not as many codes to memorize (although that got better with Sunquest with 6.0+ versions)

You can assign and dispense a unit in the same function; makes more sense, and it's quicker.

Easier to learn, and a little more straight forward.

Maintenance: MUCH better; with no official training in Cerner, I picked it up very quickly how to build a new attribute or build a new blood product.

So both have their issues; my hospital is now switching from Cerner to another HIS (that doesn't have Blood Bank) so I am going to be switching to probably SCC or Wyndgate. Oh boy, here we go again!

[jcdayaz]

Whoa! We changed to Cerner from Meditech @ 1 1/2 yrs ago. It is THE WORST computer system I have ever had the misforturne of working with. I have worked with multiple systems....and I say honestly--Cerner is horrid. Save yourself a lot of heartache and don't switch!! Their tech service is horrid, response time is horrid, there are too many "steps" involved in performing ANY function...ugh..SO not user friendly. We all hate it!! Don't do it!