Kurt W. Blasena
Vice President, Sales & Professional Services

As executive vice president of Sales & Professional Services for GHX, Kurt W. Blasena leads efforts to recruit new healthcare suppliers and providers, while working to increase value to those organizations already participating in the exchange. Blasena joined GHX shortly after its inception in the fall of 2000, first as director of Sales for the western United States and later as director of Strategic Alliances and subsequently as executive director, Business Development. In all of these positions, Blasena’s priority has been increasing participation by both buyers and sellers, recognizing that greater trading partner availability provides the foundation for delivering value across the entire supply chain.

As participation in the exchange has grown, Blasena has expanded his focus to include the identification and delivery of additional products and services that further strengthen the value to both providers and suppliers, such as services to reduce purchasing errors through buyer-seller data synchronization. Blasena further enhanced customer value by creating the opportunity for GHX to integrate GPO contract data as part of those data synchronization efforts through the establishment of strategic alliances with the majority of group purchasing organizations in the U.S., including MedAssets and Amerinet.

Blasena was instrumental in creating key strategic alliances with Broadlane and Neoforma, which enabled providers connected to their respective exchanges to conduct business with GHX suppliers without buyer or seller incurring the costs of participating in two exchanges, and paved the way for the 2006 merger with Neoforma. Blasena’s leadership further delivered on GHX’s goal of reducing costs for the entire healthcare supply chain by facilitating the merger with Medibuy, which eliminated more than $50 million in costs incurred by the healthcare industry to support duplicative e-commerce initiatives.

Blasena has more than 15 years of experience in the healthcare industry, having also held positions with industry leaders such as Johnson & Johnson Healthcare, Boston Scientific Corporation and Procter & Gamble.