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Dr. Clay Johnston, co-founder and chief medical officer of Harbor Well being.
Courtesy of Harbor Well being
A model of this text first appeared in CNBC’s Inside Wealth e-newsletter with Robert Frank, a weekly information to the high-net-worth investor and client. Enroll to obtain future editions, straight to your inbox.
When tech founder Michael Dell and his spouse Susan based their namesake medical college on the College of Texas at Austin, their mission was to advertise value-based well being care, a mannequin that rewards suppliers for higher affected person outcomes.
Dr. Clay Johnston, the primary dean of Dell Medical College, later realized the laborious half wasn’t enhancing therapy outcomes and at a decrease value, he advised CNBC. The sticking level was getting insurance coverage suppliers to pay for it, he mentioned.
So in 2021, he left the medical college with Dell’s blessing to launch clinic startup Harbor Well being. The corporate, primarily based in Austin, Texas, is a “pay-vider” that gives its personal insurance policy and owns and operates 43 major care and specialty care clinics in 4 metro hubs in Texas.
Dell’s household workplace, DFO Administration, has backed Harbor since its inception.
“Michael was enthusiastic about what we had constructed on the medical college, and he understood the constraints of that,” mentioned Johnston, who serves as Harbor Well being’s chief medical officer.
In September, Harbor raised $130 million from DFO alongside Jim Breyer’s namesake enterprise capital agency, household workplace Martin Ventures and others to increase its chain of major care clinics in Texas and increase its insurance coverage enterprise. Harbor has raised $258 million since launching in 2022.
Proudly owning clinics and the insurance coverage firm requires a large struggle chest, however it’s mandatory, mentioned Johnston, a neurologist and epidemiologist.
“The explanation we do that’s in order that now we have full management of the {dollars}, in order that we are able to take duty for individuals’s well being and use these {dollars} for no matter is sensible for individuals to have higher well being outcomes,” he defined. “We will push applied sciences, and we do not have to be centered on on visits.”
Johnston additionally knew Breyer and Charlie Martin, principal of Martin Ventures, from his work at Dell Medical College. Each have been backers since Harbor’s early days.
Martin, a serial CEO of hospital operators, backs corporations centered on enhancing affected person outcomes and healthcare prices. Breyer was drawn to the functions of synthetic intelligence in healthcare on the medical college and at Harbor, Johnston mentioned.
“He simply brings individuals collectively, and he has great insights, significantly about expertise and the way it’ll evolve,” Johnston mentioned of Breyer.
Harbor analyzes medical knowledge to foretell affected person care prices and whether or not a affected person is at excessive danger of creating a selected situation, requiring a surgical procedure or needing hospitalization. This AI evaluation allows Harbor to offer extra care to sufferers earlier than their situation worsens, based on Johnston.
Whereas household workplace deal-making has declined markedly in 2025, healthcare is likely one of the few sectors nonetheless garnering curiosity. A current household workplace survey by Goldman Sachs discovered that 28% of household workplaces deliberate to be chubby healthcare over the following 12 months and solely 10% meant to be underweight, the most effective metrics of any sector apart from expertise.
Johnston mentioned the capital-intensive nature of well being care might be “laborious to abdomen” for some traders, however he mentioned his expertise with elevating donations for the medical college bears many similarities to promoting traders on the imaginative and prescient for Harbor Well being.
“The individuals you are promoting to on the enterprise facet are largely wanting on the monetary chance of return. It is good to have an formidable imaginative and prescient that is doubtlessly extra disruptive and has the potential to to yield monetary rewards, however it stops there,” he mentioned. “The execution piece turns into extra essential.”
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