Comments on: Pam Pure Leaves McKesson

By: Former Sales VP

Former Sales VP — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:11:56 +0000

I worked at mck 4.5 yrs all in clinical mgmnt. Came in starry eyed. Worked 60-70 hrs week finally took a few weeks vaca in last year. Had 4 different bosses and a new team to manage every single year. Got hounded to move to Alpharetta as an “up and comer” when I didn’t ( had 2 kids in high school) I slowly became invisible to the Real Boys Club that exists. I spent 50% time apologizing to customers and building personal relationships so they wouldn’t dump us for nondelivery encore/herm and horizon. Encouraged to mislead about integration (pharmacy still not integrated with order entry. Tout med safety leader??? Jeeze). Only clinical deals last 3 years are small med sized hospitals that shouldve been sold paragon but commissions wouldve been lost for the boys. These places got 90% off deals if not zero sw. They thought it was a deal. Same places epic never wanted as customers. I was one of 500 layoffs before Pam and 2nd wave. Some great people there. I admired Pam but felt sorry for her because her team sucked. Mck is toxic for many but a great training ground on how to be tough. Customers: keep yelling and demanding.

By: Also RIFD

Also RIFD — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 04:36:57 +0000

Pat Blake headed McKesson Specialty. His major accomplishments:

1. Enlarging the name to McKesson Specialty Care Solutions.
2. Acquiring a huge oncology GPO that basically took over the BU culture. It’s become largely an onco business.

As a non-management employee, I didn’t see much of Pat who usually hid out in SF anyway, sort of like the Wizard of Oz. He was only with the BU for about 2.5 years if even that long.

He fired a lot of sr. execs including quite a few who deserved it IMHO.

But he was rather distant and not nearly as communicative with employee as Brian Tyler, his predecessor who is now president of Med-Surg, or Peggy Yelnek, who was shuffled off to the new Provider Relationship Systems when they split from Specialty around the time of BT’s departure for Richmond.

It’s one thing to fly from SF to Scottsdale AZ, just an hour or so, every couple of weeks for a day or two. Will Pat relocate to Alpharetta or run it long-distance? And more importantly how is the golf there?

By: Investor

Investor — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 00:36:52 +0000

After following these comments I am extremely happy that I did not accept a position from McKesson. I have known the “internal politics” there through several of their “upper managers”. With the “boys club” that reported to her, it seems they were hired more for their “looks” than their ability to run a business.
I feel for the customers and stockholders that are going to be left high and dry in a very short time. All of the above comments regarding the “boys club” are so accurate it amazing the “big boys” like Hammergren are so blind as to what is really happening there.

What a shame…they could have had it all.

By: Stockholder

Stockholder — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 01:48:35 +0000

Not sure what magic you expect Charmaine to produce. The issue with McKesson is that they are totally driven by their finances. I suspect there are many good people within McKesson who truly do care about their customers and the products they produce, but are not able to do what they believe is right because of direction from management that is driven totally by the need to “make the numbers.” Too bad.

Not much evidence one way or another on Pam’s replacement, Patrick Blake. Hasn’t done anything yet. From his background he seems to be yet another sales guy, unlikely to drive solid direction on products and customer satisfaction, but let’s see what he comes up with. I’d like to think that he is a fresh face who might surprise us.

The appointment many months ago now of Randy Spratt as CTO seemed promising but no visibility of any results from this so far. Product development is a huge weakness of MCK so one might have expected an outside appointment in this role, but no. Spratt’s appointment is a look to the past, not the future. McKesson really needed a boost in how it develops software but in turning to Spratt, the company has decided to look at how it did things in the past and not how it should do things in the future. We were hoping for better.

By: RIF'd McK Employee

RIF'd McK Employee — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 03:16:51 +0000

More big changes in the Horizon Clinical Management team….a CPM director was sent to Marketing where she will have no more employees reporting to her – good move…..it is unclear where the CPM VP went but the Sr. VP over all of Horizon Clinical Services has now got only the Project Management and the PMO came out from under Sales and is now aligned with the Services organization but is not under the same SR VP that has project management….another good move….if the 4 leaders involved with CPMs and PMO (CPEs) can put egos aside for the good of the organization and work together to reduce redundancy and ensure that project and program management are pulling in the same direction….all Horizon Clinicals under new Sr. VP leadership – Charmaine McDonald….another good move….have worked with Charmaine in the past….if anyone can straighten this mess out – Charmaine is the person to do it.