Astria Health Demands $2M From a Leading Supplier of Health Information Technology (HIT) Services For Alleged Gross Negligence and Intentional Misrepresentations

March 22, 2021, District of Washington – Recently, Plaintiff Astria Health brought an action against Defendants Cerner Corporation and Cerner RevWorks, LLC (collectively “Cerner”) for alleged gross negligence, breach of contract, breach of warranty, intentional misrepresentation, and return of transfers. Plaintiff seeks to avoid obligations, disallow claims and allegedly recover approximately $2,436,577.17 in fraudulent claims plus damages to be determined at trial.

Astria Health is a non-profit healthcare system based in Eastern Washington. Specifically, Plaintiff seeks to hold Defendants accountable for intentional misrepresentations allegedly made by Cerner to induce Astria to enter into a multi-million dollar goods and services contract for an Electronic Health Record (“EHR”) and billing system called RevWorks (“RevWorks”). According to Plaintiff, Cerner knew that EHR would not function as advertised and, it purposefully omitted references to its many dissatisfied customers. Cerner allegedly provided false information because RevWorks was apparently not “seamless and integrated” with EHR products and involved highly manual processes. According to the complaint, Cerner overstated the expertise of the staff it assigned to work on RevWorks for Astria. The complaint also contends that instead of using a Cerner-trained “team of specialists,” as promised, Cerner outsourced much of the claims and collection process to an overseas staffing company, leading to the failure of Cerner’s faulty EHR and billing and collections platforms. All of this allegedly drove Astria into bankruptcy in May 2019.

Plaintiff further asserts that in fraudulently inducing Astria to enter into the RevWorks agreement, Cerner allegedly engaged in unfair or deceptive acts or practices affecting the people and the economy in Washington. Plaintiff also accuses Cerner of materially breaching its obligations under the agreements in numerous ways.

The complaint avers that Astria reasonably relied and acted upon the false representations because it did not know that the representations made by Cerner were false. As a result, Astria allegedly sustained substantial damages and urges the court to avoid the obligations incurred under the agreements, and recover the $2,436,577.17 transferred to Cerner, according to 11 U.S.C. § 544, 548(a)(B), and 550(a); R.C.W. § 19.40.

(2)