Jim Wagner has relentlessly pursued Cerner’s mission, vision, and imperatives for more than 25 years. I am nominating Jim this year because the product he created nearly 12 years ago is looking ahead to its next decade within a product development lifecycle. With an everchanging market landscape ahead, Jim guides his team with confidence and an unfaltering ability to know the needs of the person providing care as well as the person receiving care.

If I could describe Jim in three words, they would be INNOVATIVE, LISTENER, and LEADER. Jim designed Cerner Acute Case Management to connect Cerner clinical and financial workflows—eliminating bolt-on systems, aggregating data within the same medical record as the physician, and saving nurses time from disparate or duplicative entry. I have never seen Jim stumped or without an answer. Anyone who knows Jim knows that he is an encyclopedia of information and will illustrate every facet of the answer to you in detail ensuring full transparency and trusting you with that information and his support.

If you’ve ever met Jim, you also know he lights up a room. He is kind, thoughtful, never imposing, never boisterous, and always willing to help. In 2021, Jim and his wife donated their time and talents to Cerner’s Operation Safe, ensuring patients receiving their first or second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine were monitored and attended to after the vaccine. Jim’s innovation combined with his intrinsic ability to listen—truly listen—to clients and longstanding leadership of the ACM IP Dev team have created product differentiators that have withstood the test of time:

• Automated workflows for utilization management, clinical documentation improvement, and discharge care management

• Aggregated data and documentation to perform tasks within the Cerner EHR

• The ability to electronically share patient information in near real-time across the care team

Prior to Cerner, Jim was an acute hemodialysis nurse/chronic hemodialysis nurse for more than 12 years where he saved the lives of acute kidney failure patients in a Kansas City-area hospital’s intensive care unit and kept the chronic hemodialysis patients as healthy as possible in his care while some awaited kidney transplants as the nurse in charge of a 36-station chronic hemodialysis unit. Jim has now been at Cerner since April 1996, having held many roles including:

• Product Management for PowerChart Office (Physician Office Practice EMR software) on the brand-new Cerner Millennium platform

• NHS UK Design and Development for various componentry/capabilities within PowerChart

• Enhanced PowerChart Solution Management through web experience research and development in the Summer of Synch 2005

• Cerner Global for 18 months, traveling to new countries every month to determine the success of Cerner PowerChart in those countries

• Cerner Revenue Cycle for the Product Management of Cerner Acute Case Management from the start, generating approximately $30M per year revenue for Cerner year over year; Based on the 2020 Annual Client Survey, ACM ranks #8 in all Cerner products for value and satisfaction.

Cerner will be successful under Jim’s leadership because his team is inspired and provided with opportunities for strategic growth and product advancement for our clients.