Cerner handles its public relations in-house, and it shows. To date, there is nothing in the company's "enewsroom" that refers to the aforementioned firestorm, nor has the company issued any official retractions beyond quotes from Patterson in various news articles (and truth be told, he doesn't seem all that apologetic, as he prides himself on being arrogant and blunt, among other charming character traits).

Frankly, this is insane. When a company's market cap drops $270-300 million through unusual circumstances, it's customary to acknowledge the situation and outline how it will be addressed. Otherwise, the market will presume the worst, and sell the stock accordingly.

The best way to quell a crisis like this is to come clean as fast as you can, plead guilty if necessary, and get ahead of the story instead of playing defense to every new allegation. The minute Cerner realized that the memo had leaked to the outside world, Patterson should have issued a formal apology in the form of a press release, as well as responses to postings on each and every newsgroup and message forum where the memo appeared.

One wonders how long it took for Cerner to realize that Patterson's email had hit the web. If they had been using a system like Mainsail's real-time news and newsgroup monitoring service, they would have known the minute the message appeared, and starting taking action before investors called their analysts to question the company's current market position and future prospects (if things were going well, why would the CEO go nuts on his staff?).

This apology could have referenced the upcoming Fortune article about being one of the 100 best places to work, and even pointed to the company's listing in Vault, presuming Cerner is listed there, which it is not, a grievous oversight in a complete interactive PR program (did you know that companies can post a "why work for us?" page on Vault, including its recruitment video?).

And if Cerner was really serious, the company could have turned the lemons into a potent blend of lemonade by making light of the memo, perhaps with a video of Patterson standing in the aforementioned deserted parking lot handing out coffee and donuts to the early-bird employees. Defusing the situation with humor can be dangerous, but certainly no worse than doing nothing, which seems to be Cerner's current strategy.

What would you do if you were Cerner's PR agency? Send your responses to us, and we'll publish the results in the next issue of Main Mail.

Based in Brussels, Chris Clark is senior vice president of strategic services for Mainsail. He is also the author of "Byte Back," a monthly humor column for Adweek Magazines' Technology Marketing.

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