Dr. Clay Johnston, co-founder and chief medical officer of Harbor Well being.
Courtesy of Harbor Well being
A model of this text first appeared in CNBC’s Inside Wealth publication with Robert Frank, a weekly information to the high-net-worth investor and client. Join to obtain future editions, straight to your inbox.
When tech founder Michael Dell and his spouse Susan based their namesake medical faculty on the College of Texas at Austin, their mission was to advertise value-based well being care, a mannequin that rewards suppliers for higher affected person outcomes.
Dr. Clay Johnston, the primary dean of Dell Medical Faculty, later realized the exhausting half wasn’t enhancing therapy outcomes and at a decrease price, he advised CNBC. The sticking level was getting insurance coverage suppliers to pay for it, he stated.
So in 2021, he left the medical faculty with Dell’s blessing to launch clinic startup Harbor Well being. The corporate, primarily based in Austin, Texas, is a “pay-vider” that gives its personal insurance coverage and owns and operates 43 main care and specialty care clinics in 4 metro hubs in Texas.
Dell’s household workplace, DFO Administration, has backed Harbor since its inception.
“Michael was enthusiastic about what we had constructed on the medical faculty, and he understood the constraints of that,” stated Johnston, who serves as Harbor Well being’s chief medical officer.
In September, Harbor raised $130 million from DFO alongside Jim Breyer’s namesake enterprise capital agency, household workplace Martin Ventures and others to broaden its chain of main care clinics in Texas and broaden its insurance coverage enterprise. Harbor has raised $258 million since launching in 2022.
Proudly owning clinics and the insurance coverage firm requires an enormous warfare chest, nevertheless it’s needed, stated Johnston, a neurologist and epidemiologist.
“The explanation we do that’s in order that we’ve got full management of the {dollars}, in order that we are able to take duty for individuals’s well being and use these {dollars} for no matter is sensible for individuals to have higher well being outcomes,” he defined. “We are able to push applied sciences, and we do not have to be centered on on visits.”
Johnston additionally knew Breyer and Charlie Martin, principal of Martin Ventures, from his work at Dell Medical Faculty. Each have been backers since Harbor’s early days.
Martin, a serial CEO of hospital operators, backs companies centered on enhancing affected person outcomes and healthcare prices. Breyer was drawn to the purposes of synthetic intelligence in healthcare on the medical faculty and at Harbor, Johnston stated.
“He simply brings individuals collectively, and he has fantastic insights, significantly about know-how and the way it’ll evolve,” Johnston stated of Breyer.
Harbor analyzes medical information to foretell affected person care prices and whether or not a affected person is at excessive danger of growing a particular situation, requiring a surgical procedure or needing hospitalization. This AI evaluation permits Harbor to supply extra care to sufferers earlier than their situation worsens, in keeping with Johnston.
Whereas household workplace deal-making has declined markedly in 2025, healthcare is among the few sectors nonetheless garnering curiosity. A current household workplace survey by Goldman Sachs discovered that 28% of household places of work deliberate to be obese healthcare over the subsequent 12 months and solely 10% meant to be underweight, the very best metrics of any sector aside from know-how.
Johnston stated the capital-intensive nature of well being care will be “exhausting to abdomen” for some traders, however he stated his expertise with elevating donations for the medical faculty bears many similarities to promoting traders on the imaginative and prescient for Harbor Well being.
“The individuals you are promoting to on the enterprise aspect are principally wanting on the monetary probability of return. It is good to have an bold imaginative and prescient that is probably extra disruptive and has the potential to to yield monetary rewards, nevertheless it stops there,” he stated. “The execution piece turns into extra vital.”
