Jonathan Kempton
Category Leader
Intermountain Healthcare, Salt Lake City, Utah
About Jonathan Kempton:
Jonathan Kempton was born in Provo, Utah, and raised in Kearns, Utah. He has had an interest in IT and technology for some time, a fact he attributes in part to his mother, Sheryl, who enjoyed a long career in IT/technology prior to her retirement. That interest, as well as an educational background in economics, suited him well for supply chain.
From 1999 to 2001, he served a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. After that, he started undergraduate work at Brigham Young University. While at BYU, he did a supply chain internship in Korea with LG Philips LCD, which manufactured LCD panels for flat panel TVs and laptop computers. After graduating, he moved to Korea, where he taught high school English for four years. He returned in 2008 and took a supply chain/procurement position with Novell, the software and services company based in Provo.
“Novell was creating software and technology, but they needed to buy other technology for business functions not covered by the products that they developed,” he explains. “So I was working for a software company buying software from other companies. It was a good way to learn what to look for and how to evaluate technology contracts from a supply chain perspective.” In June 2017, he joined Intermountain as a category leader, with responsibility for software and hardware in certain categories. “I manage the contract administration and supply chain functions for our infrastructure and operations side of Intermountain IT,” he says.
His transition from industry to healthcare was challenging, but interesting. Unlike industry, healthcare comes with a set of regulatory challenges, including HIPAA regulations, as well as technological ones, especially added cybersecurity requirements. “These two areas make healthcare challenging, but it’s also rewarding to understand the due diligence that’s necessary to implement technology that will protect our patient records and keep everything secure,” he says.
About Intermountain Healthcare:
Intermountain Healthcare is a not-for-profit system of 24 hospitals, 215 clinics, a Medical Group with 2,500 employed physicians and advanced practice clinicians, a health insurance company called SelectHealth, and other health services in Idaho, Utah, and Nevada.
Most interesting/challenging project in the past 12-18 months:
“We brought in a service provider to support infrastructure and operations, including service desk support, end user hardware support, server builds, network and unified communications services, etc.,” he says. “As the contract manager of the agreement, I have enjoyed playing a part in setting up the vendor management processes to track and evaluate our success, including our reporting and performance metrics. From the initial evaluation and analysis, it has been challenging.”
Looking forward to:
“I am excited about the opportunity to get more involved in developing our maturity in software asset management,” says Kempton. (“Software asset management” refers to the management and maintenance of a software license after a contract is signed, including staying in compliance with contract terms and realizing the full value of what has been purchased.) “I have been a part of the governance team, and feel there are a lot of improvements that the group is looking to make in our process and tools in the coming years. It is so helpful in supply chain to have good data to understand the needs of the organization and how to maximize the value of technology contracts. That is why I feel strongly about software asset management’s role as an input to supply chain.”
Biggest challenge/change facing healthcare supply chain professionals in the next 5 years:
“Technology use or misuse could be the biggest challenge for the healthcare supply chain in the future. The importance of data security coupled with the need to innovate and improve the digital experience of healthcare bring risks and advantages for healthcare systems.”