Morgan Health made a $25 million investment in Merative, a data, analytics and technology provider, the companies announced Tuesday.
Washington, D.C.-based Morgan Health is a JPMorgan Chase business unit focused on employer-sponsored insurance. Merative, based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, offers solutions for employers, health plans, healthcare providers, governments, life sciences and benefits advisors. One of its offerings is Truven, a real-world data application solution set focused on employers and payers. Truven includes a product called Health Insights, which is a healthcare analytics solution that helps employers understand their benefits program performance. It also includes MarketScan Databases, where employers can compare population cost, use and prevalence of healthcare services.
Morgan Health chose to invest in Merative because employers often struggle to access their medical data, said Dan Mendelson, CEO of Morgan Health. According to a recent Morgan Health-sponsored survey of self-insured employers, the absence of comprehensive data continues to be a major obstacle in creating effective internal health quality strategies. Employers struggle to consolidate medical claims from various sources, which makes it challenging to find differences in quality and make improvements.
“Merative gives employers visibility into what they’re buying, and employers often don’t get that from their health plans, and that’s, I would say, the most compelling piece,” Mendelson said in an interview. “And the data that employers get from Merative enable them to take a more proactive role in identifying needs, so they can then go back and address issues with their insurers, and have a dialogue where they’re on equal footing.”
The funding will help Merative accelerate growth, according to Gerry McCarthy, CEO of the company. Morgan Health is also a client of Merative and the companies are working together to advance Merative’s healthcare data infrastructure.
“What we like about working with Morgan Health is the fact that they are market experts,” McCarthy said in an interview. “And when I say market experts, they are actually trying to use their investments to drive the greater good of saving costs for self-insured employers and their employees. And so we have great alignment with what we’re trying to do in that world to save costs.”
This is Morgan Health’s eighth portfolio company. It recently announced an investment in Cortica, a provider for children with autism and neurodivergent conditions. It has also provided funding to fertility company Kindbody and at-home testing company LetsGetChecked. In total, Morgan Health has deployed $215 million in capital.
Looking ahead, Morgan Health is interested in investing in solutions focused on supporting small businesses, primary care and prevention and the pharmaceutical space, according to Mendelson.
“We have not, to date, done an investment in the pharmaceutical space, and it’s not for lack of wanting to, because drugs are about 25% of our spend and the spend of most employers,” he said. “Finding solutions to the issues that employers and employees face around drug costs and availability is important to us.”
Photo: Abscent84, Getty Images
