Slavitt to Lead New Venture Firm with Eye on Transforming Care for Vulnerable Populations

A new venture capital firm, led by Andy Slavitt, a former Center for Medicaid & Medicare Services (CMS) Administrator, “will seek to invest in healthcare technology and service companies transforming care delivery to America’s most vulnerable populations,” the organization announced today.

The firm, which will be called Town Hall Ventures and will be headquartered in Minneapolis and New York, announced its creation at the HLTH Conference being held this week in Las Vegas. According to a press release, it is being “built on a foundation of broad and deep expertise in building companies to improve care in Medicare, Medicaid, risk-based care, complex conditions and in addressing social determinants of health. These areas of focus touch almost 120 million Americans and approximately $1.2 trillion in annual healthcare spending.”

Along with Slavitt, Town Hall ventures will be led by Trevor Price, founder of Oxeon Holdings, an executive search and investment firm; and David Whelan, managing general partner of predecessor firm Oxeon Ventures and formerly general partner and CFO of investment firm Accretive LLC.

“As a nation we have significant healthcare infrastructure serving healthy populations while lower-income communities go underserved, leading to vastly poorer health outcomes,” Slavitt said in a statement. “We are at the beginning of a wave of innovation serving Medicare and Medicaid populations. Town Hall is being formed to help lead this massive and necessary shift. The answers are not always traditional; they involve investments in underlying systemic issues as well as innovative approaches that improve people’s health and well-being.”

Town Hall Ventures also announced its first investments, including:

• Cityblock Health, Inc., built in partnership with Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs to provide primary care, behavioral health, and human services to address unmet health and social needs in urban populations;
• Somatus, Inc., a company revolutionizing treatment and new models of care for chronic kidney patients;
• Welbe Health, LLC, a provider of integrated medical and social services to frail seniors who qualify for PACE.
• Aetion, Inc., a provider of real-world analytics and evidence to help biopharma companies and payers better understand how drugs work in the real-world to enable value-based care.

Slavitt, who ran CMS from March 2015 until January 2017 as an Obama administration appointee, also announced earlier this year that he will be part of a new coalition, called United States of Care, that carries the goal of “putting healthcare over politics.”