By Pete Mercer
March 2024 – The Journal of Healthcare Contracting
By Alan Cherry
Ken Murawski, president and founder of HealthCare Links, has spent his career dedicated to facilitating connections and fostering relationships. Or, as some would simplify it, “in sales.”
“I love the art of selling and the professionalism in medical sales,” Murawski said. While sales jobs often are surrounded by negative stigmas, Murawski said he sees things differently.
“I’ve told my children that I never sold something that someone didn’t need. That puts a different lens on a career in sales.”
In 1975, Murawski took a job at Kendall Healthcare (a predecessor to TYCO, and Covidien). Over the next 16 years at Kendall that “job” became a career as he moved from sales, to sales management and eventually to national accounts. As director of national accounts for his last three years at Kendall, he had profit and sales responsibility for over 25 national and regional buying groups and $300 million in group sales.
In 1993, he left Kendall to found HealthCare Links, with the goal of creating a sales/marketing resource focused on corporate accounts.
“The key was having the relationships. I knew there was a role to play in helping good companies compete against market share leaders,” said Murawski. “When I started HealthCare Links, our goal was to provide value to the suppliers we worked with and, more importantly, to the providers at the GPO and IDN level.” Murawski’s goal for his new company was to help clients understand the journey and to use HealthCare Links’ relationships to benefit both sides.
In the nearly 30 years since then, HealthCare Links has worked with more than 200 companies across the globe, from small tech companies to multi-billion dollar organizations.
Murawski was recently awarded the National Account Executive Lifetime Achievement Award, given to the person who best demonstrates excellence in his or her dedication to advancing and promoting National Accounts and a never-ending pursuit of advancing healthcare.
“What has been the most fulfilling thing has been helping others succeed – not only the HealthCare Links team but also making heroes out of supply chain and nursing leaders,” said Murawski. “I’ve been honored to work with a great team of people who have the same values: a willingness to work for the underdog, to lower costs for healthcare, and to introduce disruptive technology to providers at the GPO and IDN level. Indirectly, we’ve helped the salespeople within our client companies succeed by reducing the hurdles they face from competition with GPO contracts.”
Despite the huge progress the industry has made during his career, Murawski still sees room for improvement. And it all comes back to improving relationships and having mutual respect for the other links in the supply chain.
“When you meet someone and are empathetic to their role, you begin to develop a relationship that could last a long time. Relationships matter. That’s been the key to our success,” Murawski said. “I would encourage providers to be up front with suppliers. Tell them you’re not interested or when to follow up. Conversely, suppliers need to respect that answer and move on (unless you’ve done enough homework to know you can make them a hero by understanding your value proposition).
“Ultimately, we are in this together and all want to do our part in helping improve the healthcare system, whatever role you play.”