Former National Coordinator for Health IT Farzad Mostashari will lead a new startup to help physicians begin their own accountable care organizations.
The company, called Aledade, will launch with a $4.5 million investment from venture capital firm Venrock. It initially will focus on four areas--Delaware, Arkansas, Maryland and New York City--but will work to build a national model to dramatically expand within its first year.
"For me, health IT was never the 'ends,' but a 'means' to better health and better care, and I continue to believe that better data and technology is the key to a successful transformation of healthcare. And it is why the attempts to do so now can succeed, where they have failed before," Mostashari writes in a blog post to announce the company. "Empowering doctors on the frontlines of medicine with cutting-edge technology that helps them understand and improve the health of all their patients--that is the mission of our new company."
Federal rules require that ACOs be 75 percent provider-controlled, but physicians may not have the required management, technical or data skills--or interest in those areas, Jonathan Bush, president and CEO of athenahealth, points out in a recent Forbes article.
That's the market Aledade is going after, offering to manage technology, workflow redesign, compliance and quality reporting.
Mostashari's co-founders are Mat Kendall, who left ONC in March as director of the office of provider support, and Edwin Miller, who has held leadership positions in the creation of three cloud-based electronic health record products.
Mostashari previously has said that "tools we didn't dream of 20 years ago" will be the key difference between the accountable care efforts today and previous managed care efforts.
To learn more:
- read the blog post
- find the Forbes article