Marc Harrison, MD, former CEO of Salt Lake City-based Intermountain Health, will lead a new company spun out of a venture capital firm that aims to acquire and operate a health system.
General Catalyst, a multibillion-dollar venture capital firm, is spinning out Health Assurance Transformation Corp., or HATCo, to expand on its strategy to fund or develop technologies to transform healthcare.
In an Oct. 8 blog post, Dr. Harrison and General Catalyst CEO Hemant Teneja detailed their plan to create an "Amazon ecosystem of healthcare" to help health systems achieve "a more affordable, accessible and proactive system of care."
Five key takeaways:
1. By acquiring and operating a health system for the long term, HATCo aims to create a national blueprint for the transformation of healthcare delivery in which digital technologies can scale across health systems without operating in silos.
2. HATCo plans to create an open innovation platform to share best practices, new technologies and a transformation playbook with its health system partners, which together cover more than 15 percent of the U.S. population, according to General Catalyst. This represents "a rare opportunity to demonstrate, replicate and scale best practices, while reducing the burden on individual health systems to develop their own bespoke transformation assets," Dr. Harrison and Mr. Teneja wrote.
3. Value-based care is baked into company HATCo's strategic plan, which will work with the healthcare ecosystem to demonstrate that "a model that is better for patients can also be good for business."
4. Dr. Harrison and Mr. Teneja see the current private equity healthcare model as hyper-focused on removing costs from the system. Part of HATCo's plan involves giving health systems the opportunity to capitalize on new revenue streams, allowing them to invest in more innovation and in servicing the communities that they serve. The company aims to foster the creation of scaled platforms — rather than fragmented point solutions — that can "provide the missing technology pieces of the puzzle."
5. General Catalyst already has more than 20 health system partners that have early access to technologies in its health tech portfolio, which includes Transcarent, Olive, Sprinter Health, Commure and Cadence.General Catalyst has helped support the growth of businesses such as Airbnb, Hubspot, Lemonade, Livongo, Oscar, Stripe and Warby Parker.