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WellSpan Health announced new collaboration with General Catalyst's Health Assurance Transformation Company, or HATCo. WellSpan will become HATCo's first transformation partner, signing an innovative transformation-as-a-service agreement, according to Hemant Taneja, CEO of General Catalyst.
In a LinkedIn post, Taneja said, "We first began working with Roxanna Gapstur [president and CEO for WellSpan Health] and the entire WellSpan team in 2023 to address a critical pain point in staffing shortages that were straining both care teams and patient access.
"Since then, WellSpan has partnered with several General Catalyst portfolio companies," Taneja added, "including Commure, Aidoc and Hippocratic AI being crucial early adopters steering how AI-powered tools can improve care quality, operational efficiency and workforce capacity.'
He explained that with the agreement, HATCo will "deploy a team to WellSpan to co-develop their technology stack, leveraging solutions, both GC portfolio companies and external, that bring the best of care to WellSpan's patients and prove what the future of healthcare can be."
WellSpan Health's Gapstur said that what began as idea sharing and access to emerging startup innovations has developed into a new and expanded collaboration that represents a complete co-creation partnership.
"This partnership will serve as a cornerstone of our five-year strategy to simplify and personalize healthcare for our patients and clinical teams," said Gapstur in a statement.
As a result of the collaboration, the companies said they expect to recover more than 400,000 clinical hours per year due to the use of AI applications, allowing WellSpan Health team members to spend more time focusing on patients.
The collaboration will focus on three key areas:
- Workforce transformation through the automation of administrative tasks and the adoption of advanced digital tools
- Personalized and proactive care delivery via data analytics, AI and digital health innovations
- Financial sustainability by developing adaptive strategies to navigate reimbursement changes, cost pressures and industry disturbances.
THE LARGER TREND
In September, WellSpan Health expanded access to care in the Lancaster, Pennsylvania, area by providing new services at the Outpatient Center at CityGate. The new urology, urogynecology and pelvic floor reconstruction practices are part of a state-of-the-art $23 million center that opened in January, aimed at meeting the healthcare needs of Lancaster County.
In 2024, Concert Health partnered with WellSpan Health to allow the health system's South Central Pennsylvania and Northern Maryland primary care providers to provide same-day behavioral health services to patients through the digital health startup's platform.
Through the partnership, WellSpan patients are connected to Concert Health within 24 to 48 hours for symptom monitoring, counseling assistance and medication services. The digital health company's providers work with WellSpan physicians to guide the primary care provider and behavioral health team.
That same year, Nuance Communications, a Microsoft company, announced that WellSpan Health added Nuance's Dragon Ambient eXperience (DAX) to its group of patient experience-centered solutions. DAX is a tool that automates and accelerates the creation of clinical documentation during exam room and telehealth visits for immediate entry into an electronic health record system.
WellSpan Health first rolled out its partnership with Nuance in 2020, also using DAX, aiming to reduce administrative tasks that lead to provider burnout.
In June, healthcare software company Commure secured $200 million in growth funding from General Catalyst's Customer Value Fund (CVF).
The CVF helps late-stage companies grow without giving up ownership – avoiding dilution. Through its CVF, General Catalyst fronts the cost of sales and marketing and in return receives a share of the revenue from new customers generated by that investment, up to a fixed cap.
Later, the company that received the investment keeps all future profits. In a statement, Commure said the proceeds will help speed up product innovation and implementation as well as its go-to-market efforts.
That same month, Alexandre Momeni, a partner at General Catalyst, talked to MobiHealthNews about the investor's perspective on funding emerging technologies, the risks associated with these investments and the potential for the technology to change society as a whole.
