General Catalyst’s Transformation Company Plans to Buy a Health System
Former Intermountain Health CEO Marc Harrison, M.D., will lead a new company owned by venture capital firm General Catalyst called Health Assurance Transformation Corp. (HATCo). The new company will work with General Catalyst’s health system partners on transforming their operations, but it will also acquire and operate a health system where it can demonstrate the blueprint of this transformation for the rest of the industry.
In May 2022, Intermountain and General Catalyst announced a collaboration to drive innovation across the Utah-based health system with the goals of expanding value-based care, reducing total costs of care, providing world-class patient experiences, and achieving health equity objectives. Intermountain said it would leverage Health Assurance Network, which is a group of tech innovation companies within General Catalyst’s investment portfolio. These companies include Transcarent, Olive, Sprinter Health, Commure, and Cadence, among others.
In August 2022, Harrison announced he was leaving Intermountain to run the healthcare platform business for General Catalyst.
In a blog post on the General Catalyst website, Harrison and Hemant Taneja, CEO and managing director of General Catalyst, described their shared vision for the new company, including several core principles.
They said that HATCo will be purpose-built with the goal to ensure all the stakeholders are similarly incentivized (via a value-based care model) to improve access and outcomes and to make care more preventative and proactive.
Harrison and Taneja also said that HATCo aims to create a new standard of healthcare investing and set expectations for investors to think longer term.
Part of the HATCo plan, they added, will involve giving health systems the opportunity to capitalize on new revenue streams, “which (in turn) should allow them to invest in more innovation and in servicing their communities. In addition, HATCo will look to foster the creation of scaled platforms (rather than fragmented point solutions) that can provide the missing technology pieces of the puzzle.”
HATCo is committed to creating an open innovation platform, the executives stress. “We plan to partner very closely with each of our 20+ healthcare system partners, openly sharing best practices, new technologies and a transformation playbook with those partners, who together cover over 15 percent of the US population. 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.”
General Catalyst’s health system partners include UC Davis Health, HCA Healthcare, Jefferson Health, Intermountain Wellspan Health, Guy’s & St Thomas NHS Foundation Trust, Cincinnati Children’s, UCI Health, Health First, Metro Health, Medical University of South Carolina Health, Hackensack Meridian Health, Banner Health, Universal Health Services, and OhioHealth.
