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WebMD exec resigns amid accounting probe

The president and chief operating officer of the online health care start-up resigns amid questions over an accounting audit by his former employer.

Kim Girard
Kim Girard has written about business and technology for more than a decade, as an editor at CNET News.com, senior writer at Business 2.0 magazine and online writer at Red Herring. As a freelancer, she's written for publications including Fast Company, CIO and Berkeley's Haas School of Business. She also assisted Business Week's Peter Burrows with his 2003 book Backfire, which covered the travails of controversial Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina. An avid cook, she's blogged about the joy of cheap wine and thinks about food most days in ways some find obsessive.
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Kim Girard
WebMD's president and chief operating officer has resigned from the online health care start-up, amid questions over an accounting audit by his former employer.

Jay Gilbertson is stepping down from WebMD and faces questions about his role in an accounting controversy at McKesson HBOC, his former employer, the Wall Street Journal reported. Gilbertson, who joined WebMD in November, was former chief financial officer at HBO & Company, which merged with McKesson.

The Journal report stated that over the past two months, McKesson's auditors have found accounting problems at HBO, some occurring during Gilbertson's tenure. Those findings resulted in an earnings restatement and a huge dip in McKesson's stock price, the newspaper reported.

WebMD last month announced long-anticipated plans to merge with another health-related Web site, Healtheon. Under the deal, the shareholders of each company will get an equal stake in the new company, which will be called Healtheon WebMD and trade under the symbol "HLTH." Gilbertson had not been named to any post under the merger.

The company also received cash infusions last month from Microsoft, which invested $250 million, along with Intel, Excite, and software wholesaler Softbank, which invested another $110 million.

The firms could not be reached for comment this morning.