Health system venture arms have multiplied as leaders seek to accelerate AI adoption and too often they’ve accumulated deals without clearly connecting them to care delivery.
Cincinnati-based Bon Secours Mercy Health built its venture arm differently.
Accrete Health Partners, the system’s digital investment arm, has built a disciplined track record on a foundational constraint: the health system would not invest in a digital startup unless it already had a clear path to becoming a meaningful client. The model has produced four new investments in 2025 and a portfolio of 10 companies spanning every operating team at the health system — a track record Jason Szczuka attributes not to volume but also to a strategic approach.
“We intentionally start with our own health system needs, knowing that if they’re needs of ours, there’s going to be needs for others, for interesting technological solutions,” said Mr. Szczuka, chief digital officer of Bon Secours Mercy Health and president of Accrete Health Partners, in a recent “Becker’s Healthcare Podcast” episode.
Mr. Szczuka brings a cross-sector vantage point to that framework. Before joining Bon Secours Mercy Health, he cofounded Bryter, a digital health startup that was subsequently acquired by Cigna, where he served as chief digital officer for three years. That trajectory — startup founder, payer executive, now health system leader and investor — shapes how he thinks about where digital health deals. Many tend to fail when investments are made in search of a need rather than in response to one.
“We’re not just pursuing deal activity for deal activity’s sake,” Mr. Szczuka said. “We have a really high batting average for solutions we take a swing at.”
What sustains that average is the deliberate alignment of three parties that most innovation efforts treat separately: the health system’s own operators, outside investors and external innovators building solutions Bon Secours Mercy Health could never develop in-house but is eager to adopt. When those three align around a shared operational problem, the vendor gains a reference client that sharpens its go-to-market approach.
“This has really been a situation where rising tide is raising all boats,” Mr. Szczuka said.
The model has drawn interest from peer systems looking to build or retool their own digital venture strategies, particularly as financial pressure mounts to show AI return on investment. Recent Accrete investments reflect the breadth of that approach, from investing in workforce management technology to developing clinical retention tools, each rooted in a Bon Secours Mercy Health operating challenge before entering the portfolio.
“We need ambition to be sure, but we need to couple that with the operating rigor so that we identify clear problems,” Mr. Szczuka said. “There are going to need to be sustainable partnerships across large health systems like Bon Secours Mercy Health, across large payers like Cigna and United, across large platforms, whether it be Epic or Microsoft or Workday.”
Then identifying the right gaps to attack will differentiate the successful ventures from the failures.
“The innovators that are finding the white spaces amongst those big players and bringing forward innovative, repeatable, scalable solutions to fill those white spaces will make life better for patients, clinicians and ourselves as the people running the health systems,” said Mr. Szczuka. “If that doesn’t get you excited, then you should call your career quits because that’s what’s going to be really cool to work on over these next few years.”
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