WellSpan Health is deepening its collaboration with General Catalyst’s Health Assurance Transformation Company, becoming its first “transformation partner” to advance the use of AI in healthcare.
The initiative targets three areas: automating administrative tasks to allow staff to focus on patient care, using AI and data tools to personalize treatment, and developing strategies for financial sustainability. WellSpan said in a Sept. 3 press release that the effort could reclaim more than 400,000 clinical hours annually and deliver double-digit business improvements over five years.
The collaboration builds on work that began in 2023 and aims to modernize care delivery, improve patient outcomes, and boost operational efficiency. WellSpan’s earlier projects with General Catalyst included collaborations with portfolio companies Aidoc and Hippocratic AI to address workforce shortages.
In a follow-up interview on the partnership, WellSpan President and CEO Roxanna Gapstur, Ph.D., R.N., told Becker’s that the designation signals a deeper, collaborative relationship beyond a traditional vendor arrangement.
“About five years ago, we embarked on our 2025 strategic plan. During that time, we knew it would be important to have partners to fulfill the transformation that we thought needed to happen in the healthcare system, and General Catalyst was one of our key partners,” Dr. Gapstur said. “We’ve been a successful early adopter of technology components that could really solve the challenges that healthcare faces today, and we’re proud of that.”
Dr. Gapstur emphasized that lessons learned from prior projects with Aidoc and Hippocratic AI will inform the broader partnership.
“We’ve proven that these innovative solutions can work in the real world with real patients. We haven’t just piloted things—we’ve actually scaled them across our entire organization,” she said.
The partnership will allow WellSpan to influence the development and deployment of AI tools. Dr. Gapstur said the goal is to simplify and personalize healthcare, potentially creating a model for other health systems.
“Well, we’re learning about how to do that right now,” she said, regarding the projected 400,000 hours saved annually. “Our vision would be saving administrative time and the time providers, nurses and other care team members spend navigating the red tape of healthcare, using technology in the background to support them. Then, working with those care team members to refashion roles so they have more time to spend with patients.”
When it comes to defining the success of this partnership, the York, Pa.-based WellSpan health system will do this across three work streams, Dr. Gapstur said, measuring both financial and operational outcomes, as well as patient and provider satisfaction.
“Our goal is to simplify and personalize, and we want to get the perspective of our care teams and our patients on how successful that’s been,” she said.
Looking ahead, Dr. Gapstur said WellSpan aims to share its learnings with other health systems.
“I hope we’ll be best placed to work because of how efficient and good our processes are, but I also hope that we can share our learnings with others and help to make healthcare better for everyone,” she said.
She also emphasized the importance of developing new skills among staff to work with AI safely and effectively.
“You really do have to be open to learning new things if you’re going to be an early adopter of this kind of people-process-technology approach,” she said.
