Health systems increasingly join consortiums to create innovative solutions to mounting challenges

The Buzz This Week

As health systems face immense challenges—from funding cuts to policy changes to slim operating margins—many are combining forces to create innovative solutions for better, more sustainable care delivery. A major new consortium kicked off just last month.

Chicago-based Abundant Venture Partners (AVP) launched a collaboration among its venture funds, venture studio, and an alliance of 17 health systems. The group is looking to add up to 10 more members. Combined, Abundant has nearly $80 billion in buying power. Abundant’s venture funds support a range of solutions, including a smart phone app that pairs with a digital platform to offer telehealth coaching to surgical patients for perioperative and post-operative instructions, a virtual post-acute care network and insights platforms for lab and workforce data.

Many similar consortia have also launched in recent years, including:

Longitude Health was founded in October by Baylor Scott & White Health, Memorial Hermann Health System, Novant Health, and Providence. Michigan Medicine also joined last month. The group is focused on three initiatives: specialty pharmacy services, population health management, and financial experience.
The Aegis Digital Consortium started in April 2024, led by Aegis Ventures co-founder John Beadle and former Mayo Clinic CEO John Noseworthy, MD. UPMC Enterprises and Vanderbilt Health joined in November, bringing together 11 US health systems from across the country, representing more than $65 billion in annual revenue. Aegis works closely with member health systems to innovate from challenges they experience, building upon 3 years of previous collaborations with Northwell Health (which is also a member of AVP).
Graphite Health was co-founded in 2021 by Intermountain Health, Presbyterian Healthcare Services, and SSM Health. Kaiser Permanente joined later. Graphite Health’s goals are to transform digital health with an interoperable platform that features an open digital app marketplace.
Truveta was founded in 2020 and now is a collective of 30 health systems that share de-identified patient data. In January, the collaborative announced the Truveta Genome Project, which it claims will be “the largest and most diverse database of genotypic and phenotypic information ever assembled…at over ten times the scale of previous endeavors.”
Civica Rx was formed in 2018 by seven health systems and three philanthropies in response to shortages of critical generic medicines. Today, the nonprofit provides more than 70 medications to more than 1,400 hospitals.

Another alliance that bears watching is the Health Assurance Transformation Company, or HATCo, formed in 2023 by venture capital firm General Catalyst with more than 20 health systems covering more than 15% of the US population. Among them are HCA, Jefferson Health, and Intermountain. Co-founder Marc Harrison, MD, a pediatric critical care physician and former Intermountain president and CEO, leads the collaboration.

HATCo focuses on developing “health assurance” and interoperability, and it plans to demonstrate its model through the long-term operation of a health system. To this end, HATCo signed a deal in October to acquire Summa Health, pledging $200 million over 7 years. While the venture capital purchase must still receive regulatory approvals, HATCo has said it intends to focus on building “tech-enabled healthcare delivery platforms at scale, across all points of care.”

Why It Matters

While merger guidelines are expected to be less stringent under the Trump Administration, policy uncertainties and anticipated federal funding reductions could place large M&A deals on the backburner. At the same time, health systems are generating value from their collaborative innovations.

This period of flux could serve as an inflection point, allowing health systems to examine some of their biggest pain points and drive solutions collectively. At the time of Aegis Digital Consortium’s launch, it pointed to five primary challenges of its nine health system members: margin compression, increased competition from tech-enabled entities, workforce health, health inequities, and a two-fold challenge from both the speed of technological advancement and lack of integration among vendor solutions.

Early successes of recent ventures demonstrate solutions that extend the capacity of critical staff members in short supply. As part of Aegis Ventures’ $100 million partnership with Northwell, the health system piloted use of an agentic artificial intelligence (AI) software to process authorizations for a central team of nurse case managers planning discharges for patients moving to post-acute care.

Agentic AI works “autonomously,” meaning it makes decisions and executes tasks to achieve specific goals. As a result, Northwell eliminated the need to triple the size of its case management team while simultaneously allowing more time for patient care by nurses, social workers, and other staff members.

AVP member MedStar Health brought startup Auxira Health to market, providing a seamless extension of cardiology practices by creating remote pods composed of advanced practice providers, medical assistants, and registered nurses. The effort resulted in improved metrics across several areas, including cardiologist well-being, patient wait time for appointments, and patient satisfaction.

By sharing insights and spreading financial risk, healthcare organizations can address core business problems, create diversified revenue streams, and generate returns by scaling quickly and efficiently. Health systems can also lower the risk inherent in seed funding and startup costs by pooling their resources for innovation.