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Judy Wilson-Kontny is a VP
of McKesson Corp’s RelayHealth
Thanks in part to her career-long interest in IT,
“There are now standards on the way medical records should be kept,” she notes with pride and satisfaction
 Over her thirty-year career Judy Wilson-Kontny has seen many changes in IT and its use in healthcare. She herself has helped bring some of them about.
“The great thing is that IT in healthcare is really making a difference today!” she declares. “Early on it was a vision, but now we’ve come far enough in healthcare to see how it’s helping the care delivery process from a patient’s point of view.”
Wilson-Kontny has been a VP at RelayHealth (Atlanta, GA) for a year, based in the company’s Chicago, IL office. RelayHealth is McKesson’s connectivity business; Wilson-Kontny has been with McKesson, a healthcare services and healthcare IT company, since 1997.
Intelligent network
McKesson created RelayHealth in 2006 to be what it calls healthcare’s “intelligent network.” Whether it’s used to process medical or prescription claims, provide pharmaceutical safety messages, manage online payments or enable physicians to securely communicate results to their patients online, RelayHealth’s open network moves healthcare data, Wilson-Kontny explains. “What we’re trying to do is create a way for healthcare to collaborate. We engage every healthcare constituent in the process: patient, provider, payer, pharmacist, financial institution and others, to make it more efficient and more effective. We synchronize the care process by giving access to information. RelayHealth enables a virtual exchange of patient information.”
Creating the role
Bringing several businesses together to create RelayHealth’s role within McKesson was very much in line with Wilson-Kontny’s previous career successes. Now, in her VP position, she also functions as an advisor to the company’s president.
Moving to Chicago had personal advantages as well: Wilson-Kontny’s fiancé was located there. “I had definite ideas about this,” she says. “Getting married when you can’t be together is no way to start!”
It all began with nursing
Wilson-Kontny began with a BS in nursing from the University of Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh, PA), working her way through school in nursing-support roles. She moved on to a graduate program working with children with cardiac disease and their families. She began developing her ideas about hospital management in clinics in Pittsburgh, Cleveland Clinic and Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland, OH).
“Major teaching hospitals are outstanding in delivering medical care, but not as organized about things that aren’t directly related to patient care,” she says. “I got more and more involved in the business perspective. The higher I moved up in the profession, the more interested I got in how it could be done better.”
On to Columbia Presbyterian
She went east with her first husband and worked at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center (New York, NY), where she was associate director of nursing from 1980 to 1983. She participated in startup healthcare information systems as part of a committee studying ways
to automate the hospital: this was a turning point in her career. As IT attracted her more and more, she entered New York University’s graduate program in health administration.
“We talked about what could be done and what should be done, but back then most of it was just ‘vaporware,’” she says with a smile. “But I got really excited, enamored of the idea that
IT could change healthcare!”
Consulting: the broad view
Being a woman and a nurse carried professional limitations, so after completing her MS in health admin in 1983 she went to work as a consultant with Ernst & Young (at that time Ernst & Whinney, New York, NY). Traveling to hospital clients gave her a broad perspective of the IT challenges in healthcare. “Being a consultant was a really good way to stop being a nurse and use a lot of the other skills I had,” she says.
Then one of her clients needed an executive director for its surgery center, and she moved to St. Barnabas Outpatient Centers (Livingston, NJ) in 1985.
“I was divorced, with no special roots in New York City, and St. Barnabas needed someone to fix their operational issues. It was a great opportunity for me at the time,” she recalls.
Management skills
She learned to build teams, developed her management skills and found she enjoyed making decisions and running the operation. “I encouraged my staff to work as a team,” she says.
In 1987, she moved on to become corporate director of planning and marketing for Cathedral Healthcare Systems (Orange, NJ).
Moving up at McKesson
In 1988 Wilson-Kontny learned that HBO & Co (HBOC) needed an area VP for sales and field operations. HBOC was acquired by McKesson in the late 1990s.
The company really wanted a man for the position, but she convinced interviewers that
she was well qualified for the job. In the final interview, she and the company president
found common ground on issues of customer satisfaction, integrity and honoring commitments. “I don’t think he was 100 percent thrilled,” she recalls with a smile, “but I was successful in
the job.”
As sales and field VP Wilson-Kontny took on a territory in northeast New Jersey, New York and New England. After two years she became VP of field services for the North Atlantic Region.
Back to consulting
In 1993 Wilson-Kontny moved to a consulting opportunity at Advanced Medical Systems (AMS), an entrepreneurial operation. AMS was a division of Standard Register Corp (Dayton, OH), which produced forms for hospitals, had acquired a software business and was hoping to merge these interests. Praiseworthy in itself, the concept engendered many problems in the sixty major hospitals that were Wilson-Kontny’s clients.
AMS was eventually dissolved, and Wilson-Kontny joined several former consulting colleagues at Alltel’s healthcare division (Little Rock, AR). Setting up IT systems for customers, finding a CIO, supporting outsourcing and hiring people to fill the gaps was satisfying and interesting.
“I was working with eight really experienced individuals,” she says. “We’d go in, set it all up and get it all turned over. You build the plan and then you go away.”
Back to McKesson
But by 1997 she was ready for a change, and HBOC needed a sales leader to educate and integrate the twenty-three new businesses it had acquired. The challenge of implementing new salesforce automation software along with the company’s forecasting tool brought Wilson-Kontny to the Atlanta, GA office in 2000.
After McKesson acquired HBOC, Wilson-Kontny advanced to VP of corporate solutions, and moved on to VP and GM of the company’s hospital IS business in Lake Mary, FL. Next she moved to Dallas, TX, where McKesson was working with Perot Systems to deliver an integrated hospital system for Triad Corp. Her title there was VP and GM for customer ops.
Professional and personal satisfaction
Wilson-Kontny was interested in moving to Chicago to be near her fiancé, and the opportunity came with RelayHealth. Her skills in assuring customer satisfaction were a good fit as the new business ramped up.
Her various jobs have given her a rich network of associates, both women and men. She notes that sharing ideas with colleagues who have alternative views can help balance her work.
Early in her career Wilson-Kontny made a decision against having children, but she’s heartily enjoying the family of four she acquired with her recent marriage.
Golf has been her favorite sport over the years, and her handicap has been as low as six. Qualifying for the USGA MidAm in Atlanta was a dream come true for her. And so, really, is
her whole career.
“Healthcare IT is finding a commitment and making decisions on evidence-based medicine,” Wilson-Kontny concludes. “There are now standards on the way medical records should be.
“Everything I’ve done has been about trying to improve healthcare.”
D/C
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