Analyst, Interoperability

Wellvana is the leader in value-based care enablement, serving over 800,000 patients across 40 states.

Wellvana is a fast-growing healthcare company that focuses on value-based care. They help primary care providers improve patient outcomes, reduce administrative tasks, and transition away from traditional fee-for-service models.

With an expansive accountable care network of hospitals, health systems, and independent primary care practices, Wellvana helps future-forward organizations take the right risks, unlock new revenue, and deliver better patient outcomes. 

In 2024, Wellvana’s ACO participants generated over $337 million in savings to Medicare, with the company’s flagship ACO achieving more savings than any other MSSP ACO in the nation.


Building Wellvana
Providers and healthcare entrepreneurs have known for too long that fee-for-service can’t be the future. But neither could find the way to Wellvana on their own.

From Hospitals to Holistic Health
In San Antonio, internist Saleh Jaafar, MD, and pulmonologist Jairo Melo, MD, were losing patients, revenue and sleep. The tangled web of primary care, specialists, surgery centers, emergency rooms and nursing homes was hardly working as a system. The busy physicians had ambitious plans to coordinate care but limited business experience or capital to execute at scale.

Then they met venture capitalists Charlie Martin and Devin Carty.

Martin Ventures was working on an entirely new business thesis after building Vanguard Health Systems and seeing all the well-intended care that goes to waste. They increasingly understood the traditional healthcare system wasn’t really designed for health. Too many patients lacked a quarterback with skin in the game to guide their care. So they designed a company to change that.

They called it Wellvana.

The word casts a vision for communities made healthy as care focuses entirely on quality rather than quantity. The name also transcends the current state of healthcare to a future where there’s no more suffering caused by a broken system, where patients are put first, and providers lead the way.

Life-Changing Moves
With high-minded aspirations, the startup went deep in one market — San Antonio — and, in 2019, established a network consisting of providers that agreed to work collaboratively with Wellvana to deliver value-based care that improves outcomes and lowers the total cost of care. Primary care doctors and specialists in the San Antonio area joined an MSSP Accountable Care Organization, managed in part by Wellvana, and had access to Medicare Advantage contracts, geared to keep seniors healthy while lowering the cost of care.

As Wellvana grew, CMS created new opportunities to serve patients in traditional Medicare, such as through its Global and Professional Direct Contracting Model, a predecessor program to the ACO REACH Model. Through the GPDC Model, Wellvana could now take full financial risk on behalf of primary care practices and help them succeed through data insights, coding assistance and high-touch clinical support.

As adoption accelerated through COVID-19, Wellvana emerged as a leader in the next generation of value-based enablers. Its high-performing physicians are making a better living and keeping patients healthier in 23 states and counting.

In spite of its rapid growth, the company remains grounded in the belief that there can be no shortcuts to “Wellvana.” But, by caring for patients and supporting providers, everyone can win in value-based care.