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.

The Heart of Dr. Jaafar

We took a trip to Bandera, TX to visit with our co-founder and learn more about how he's using value-based care to provide high-touch care for his patients.