Despite having a staff of only three people, Cincinnati-based Bon Secours Mercy Health’s venture capital arm had a successful and active 2025.
Accrete Health Partners — which targets investing between $5 million and $10 million in digital startups that Bon Secours Mercy Health will also become clients of — completed four new investments last year. This was more than almost any other health system, even though most its size have investment teams of 10 or more employees.
“Too many go out and make investments in interesting solutions and then unsuccessfully go searching for a need in their health system,” Jason Szczuka, chief digital officer of Bon Secours Mercy Health and president of Accrete Health Partners, told Becker’s. “We go the exact opposite route because we don’t want to be investing in companies unless we already have a clear path to becoming a meaningful client of theirs at BSMH; otherwise, too often, it’s just a waste of everybody’s time.”
The four deals in 2025 involved agentic AI startup Hyro, virtual care platform Hellocare, pricing data provider Trek Health, and workforce solution Definity. The health system entered into commercial agreements with all of them. Founded in late 2022, Accrete Health Partners’ 10 portfolio companies touch every operating team at Bon Secours Mercy Health, a Catholic system with $13.3 billion in annual revenue and 47 hospitals across six states.
Accrete also successfully exited an earlier investment and launched six new projects at the health system that include startups it’s evaluating investing in this year.
“It’s the proverbial ‘you’ve got to eat your own dog food,’” Mr. Szczuka said. “When we partner with these innovators, we’re helping our health system more successfully deliver care, we’re helping these startups sharpen their go-to-market value propositions, and via this powerful combination, we’re realizing both short-term margin and long-term value creation.”
Mr. Szczuka said other health systems often reach out for advice on starting or revamping their venture capital arms — especially as they want to pursue AI adoption, but often without a reliable plan for return on investment.
“No. 1 is, I always say, model your deal team so that you’re, by definition and capacity, more dependent on, and therefore aligned with, operating partners around your own health system,” he said. “Because you’re not successful just because a deal closes. It’s when your investors, your operators and your innovators continue collaborating after deals close that the real magic happens.”
This tight collaboration helped land Bon Secours Mercy Health on the 2025 Most Wired list from the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives for leading in digital maturity.
“And I want more health systems to have this kind of success because I want more innovators having health systems on their cap table, as that’s the only way to ensure our industry’s needs and the best solutions for them are accelerated,” Mr. Szczuka said. “Otherwise, we’re all at the whim of key stakeholders chasing shiny objects and, even worse, great solutions never getting to scale.”
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