MCKESSON: Launches Web-Based Health Division
Following a "blistering" scandal and the removal of its CEO last year, McKesson HBOC Inc., the nation's leading drug distributor, announced yesterday the creation of a new Internet health care unit called iMcKesson, the Wall Street Journal reports. David Mahoney, who has served as McKesson's co-CEO since the company announced "accounting improprieties" in April 1999, will head up the division's focus on Internet-based health care operations. The iMcKesson Web site will allow doctors and hospital personnel to perform daily operational functions, such as scheduling patient visits, ordering lab tests, verifying patient claim eligibility, prescribing medications and storing and transmitting electronic medical records via the Internet. While McKesson currently offers such services through its individual software packages, the new unit will provide them as "one-stop services" for health care providers on a single Web site (Zimmerman, 6/12). "By taking these businesses out of the parent company, the smaller company can probably be more nimble in executing on what appears to be a significant opportunity," Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette Securities analyst Steven Halper said (San Francisco Chronicle, 6/13). The division's headquarters will be located in San Francisco, and will include 2,000 of McKesson's current employees (Bryant, Atlanta Business Chronicle, 6/12).
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