Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, JPMorgan Chase Announce CEO of Joint Health Company

Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase have taken the next step in forming their healthcare company by tapping Atul Gawande, MD, general and endocrine surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and professor of surgery at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School, to become the chief executive officer, effective July 9.

“We said at the outset that the degree of difficulty is high, and success is going to require an expert’s knowledge, a beginner’s mind, and a long-term orientation,” said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon. “Atul embodies all 3, and we’re starting strong as we move forward in this challenging and worthwhile endeavor.”

The partnership also announced that the independent company will be headquartered in Boston. Gawande is the founding executive director of the health systems innovation center, Ariadne Labs. He is also a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine.

“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 US and across the world,” said Gawande in a statement. “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. This work will take time but must be done. The system is broken, and better is possible.”

In January, the 3 companies announced in a joint statement that they planned on forming a separate, independent company “free from profit-making incentives and constraints” to tackle the issue of rising healthcare costs for employees and their families.

The company will focus on technology solutions as it attempts to lower health costs and increase satisfaction among employers and employees.