JPMorgan Chase’s new health care venture,
Dr. Atul Gawande will take the helm on July 9, the three companies announced Wednesday. He will be based in Boston.
A widely recognized leader in health care, Gawande currently practices general and endocrine surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He is also a professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School and a founding director of Adriane Labs, a health systems innovation firm.
Additionally, Gawande is a staff writer for The New Yorker and the author of several books on the health care industry, including "Complications," "Better" and "The Checklist Manifesto."
JPMorgan Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon praised Gawande as an “innovator.”
“As employers and as leaders, addressing health care is one of the most important things we can do for our employees and their families, as well as for the communities where we all work and live,” Dimon said in a press release. “Together, we have the talent and resources to make things better, and it is our responsibility to do so.”
In his new role, Gawande will lead the charge on cutting health care costs and improving efficiency at the three corporate behemoths. Dimon has described the goal of the venture as revamping the delivery of health care for JPMorgan's U.S. employees “and, potentially, all Americans.”
How Gawande plans to do so remains is unclear. In the months since the new venture was announced, big questions have surrounded the effort, including what it plans to build and how it will be structured.
The three companies described the venture as “an independent entity that is free from profit-making incentives and constraints."
Gawande said he’s ready to get started.
“I have devoted my public health career to building scalable solutions for better healthcare delivery that are saving lives, reducing suffering, and eliminating wasteful spending both in the U.S. and across the world,” he said in the release. “Now I have the backing of these remarkable organizations to pursue this mission with even greater impact for more than a million people, and in doing so incubate better models of care for all.”
Separately, JPMorgan’s asset management division on Wednesday announced a partnership with Amazon to install “Hub by Amazon” storage units for receiving and delivering packages in 85 multifamily buildings that the New York megabank manages for institutional investors.
No financial details about the partnership were disclosed.
