We believe shifting toward value-based care is fundamental to the proactive, accessible, and affordable healthcare system we envisage in our Health Assurance thesis. Value-Based Care (VBC) centers outcomes, enhances patient engagement, drives savings, and is proactive by design. Despite its promise, the broad activation of value-based care has been stifled and primarily impactful in Medicare Advantage and Fee-for-Service. We believe there is an immense opportunity to usher in VBC into the Commercial population (covering ~180M+ individuals in the US today) and ultimately advance Health Assurance. While structural barriers exist, including the split between fully-insured and self-funded employers, and the savings levers may be more complex, we believe healthcare management for the working age population is critical to minimizing avoidable and age-related downstream costs.
Healthcare visionaries, Tony Miller and Dr. Clay Johnston, are working toward realizing the value-based care promise through Harbor Health. Tony is a serial entrepreneur in the healthcare services and benefit design world, having founded Definity Health and Bind Benefits which were both sold to UnitedHealth Group. Clay has deep clinical experience as the inaugural dean of Dell Medical School, an innovative institution redefining medical education with a value-based care lens. Together, we believe they are the perfect complements to each other, combining high-value clinical services with innovative benefit design that incentivizes appropriate utilization and lower costs.
“Co-Creating” Commercial Value-Based Care
Co-creating care with patients is core to Harbor Health’s mission. This Austin-based clinically-driven system has value-based contracts with payors like BCBS TX and CMS, and operates ten clinics, serving nearly 50k patients. Patients are treated holistically and assigned a multispeciality care team. The shift toward value-based care will be incremental as they will manage total cost of care (TCOC) risk in the near-term and aim to launch a projected insurance product within the next few years. We believe Harbor’s integrated insurance and clinical approach will truly align patient and provider behavior to succeed in VBC. The core tenets of the Harbor platform include: Harbor Health Medical Group, Harbor Health Insurance, a Clinically Integrated Network for complex conditions, and Comprehensive Technology across operations, clinical, and payor functions.
We’re thrilled to announce that we are leading Harbor’s $95.5M funding round alongside 8VC and Alta Partners to seek to transform commercial value-based care. General Catalyst is proud to partner with Tony, Clay, and the experienced team they’ve assembled to move the Health Assurance needle forward with high-quality, low-cost care.
