Hemant Taneja, CEO and managing director of venture capital firm General Catalyst, and Marc Harrison, MD, former CEO of Intermountain Health, announced the formation of a new General Catalyst-owned company called Health Assurance Transformation Corporation (HATCo), with Harrison as CEO.
The two also announced that they intend to acquire a health system which will use technology to prevent and deliver health care and will operate under a value-based care model.
HATCo is made up of 20 health systems and a large payer that accounts for about 15 percent of healthcare revenue and is located in 43 states and four countries, according to Harrison.
“We have tremendous scale to work with in terms of sandboxes to start testing some of our healthcare solutions,” Harrison shared. “Hamant and his team at General Catalyst have assembled more than 150 digital health companies. They serve as substrates for us to use to transform this healthcare system. They will be separate from HATCo, but aligned and connected, and will work with other companies outside of the General Catalyst portfolio companies.”
Harrison said the company needs to be able to provide affordable, unique advisory services to help health systems transform.
“The biggest announcement is that we’re getting into the delivery system and buying a health system,” Mr. Harrison said. “We’re very thoughtful about the type of health system we want to partner with. There will be more to come in the future, but let’s just say we need a proof of concept for this wild, radical transformation of what healthcare should look like in the United States and beyond, and the only way we can do that is to have our own system.”
Taneja said that’s an unusual move for a venture capital company, but one that’s needed. It also forces the firm to think beyond its own business.