UnitedHealth Group’s CEO Hemsley held investments in competitive companies: WSJ

February 19, 2026 | by

Now this is rich, in many senses of the word. UHG’s current CEO and chair, Stephen Hemsley, through his investment company, holds stakes in companies competitive with UnitedHealth’s broad scope of healthcare businesses. Mr. Hemsley founded Cloverfields Capital Group LP in 2019, while he was chairman of UHG’s board but no longer CEO, which ended in 2017. According to the Wall Street Journal report, Cloverfields not only cloaked investments through affiliated entities in several early-stage healthcare companies: Claritas, Monogram Health, Nexben, and Solera Health–but also did not disclose Mr. Hemsley’s role in written communications nor in public announcements. 

There’s nothing unusual here, as board members have other businesses or work elsewhere, and investment groups routinely form acquisition entities. What is unusual is that Mr. Hemsley never disclosed these interests as part of UnitedHealth’s disclosures for board members, nor, when reassuming the CEO position last May after Sir Andrew Witty’s resignation. For instance, Humana discloses board chairman Kurt Hilzinger’s role at Court Square, a private-equity firm that invests in healthcare companies. Court Square lists the names of the healthcare companies in which it has invested.

UnitedHealth’s statement to the WSJ is interesting indeed. FTA:

In response to questions from the Journal, UnitedHealth said Cloverfields is a family office as well as an investment adviser, and that Hemsley “maintains a diversified portfolio of public and private investments, some of which are in the health care sector.” In the “vast majority” of cases, the company said, he owns 5% or less of these healthcare companies, and he doesn’t have a controlling interest in any of them.

After Hemsley resumed his CEO role last May, the company said, he “transferred all his personal ownership interests in health care-related companies to a newly established trust” and recused himself from corporate decisions related to those interests. It said Hemsley is prohibited from participating in decisions made by the trust’s independent trustees, which “aligns with established models for avoiding potential conflicts of interest.”

UnitedHealth hasn’t publicly disclosed anything about the private healthcare investments tied to Hemsley, or about the trust. It didn’t respond to a request to share trust documents or a question about whether the trust is “blind,” which would prevent Hemsley from knowing which assets were being bought or sold. (Editor’s emphasis)

[later]

“Mr. Hemsley continues to comply fully with UnitedHealth Group’s conflict of interest and trading policies, as well as all applicable SEC and other regulatory requirements,” UnitedHealth said in the statement.

UHG is, as expected, pedaling very quickly to cover the non-disclosure of Mr. Hemsley’s interests as board chair. But the fact that Cloverfields is not an independent investment entity but acts as a family office makes this worse, not better. “Vast majority” of cases below 5%–what is above 5%? 

UHG is also in the VC business through Optum Ventures, which has invested in 60+ small healthcare companies between 2018 through 2025. This is another conflict. 

It didn’t start with Cloverfields. Mr. Hemsley invested $10 million for a 1.6% stake in the Center for Autism and Related Disorders (CARD). Despite the name, it is a for-profit company and at that time was owned by Blackstone. It provides autism therapy through clinics,  modeled on Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA). UnitedHealth in 2017, while he was CEO, extended commercial coverage of autism services and still does business with CARD. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization in June 2023 and now is privately owned by the founder and her business partner.

Conclusion: The answer is obvious–that every Cloverfields healthcare investment in which Mr. Hemsley or his family/office have an interest should be 1) fully disclosed, and 2) placed in a blind trust until he is no longer CEO and board chairman. Then he can do as he pleases. Not only this Editor’s opinion, but a legal one included in the WSJ article.

Even more of an argument for breaking up UnitedHealth Group. This Editor’s take and two others. A payer should not be a ‘black box’ that no one really understands or manages. Wasn’t Change Healthcare a hard enough lesson?

Also Becker’s

Short takes: UK’s Cera raises $150M, $105M for Qventus, Solera Health’s $40M; General Catalyst’s AWS deal, Virta Health hits $100M in revenue, powered by GLP-1 maintenance; VirtuAlly’s JC telehealth accreditation

January 16, 2025 | by

A ‘this-n-that’ roundup, with a flurry of fundings and more.

Larger fundings are really swinging it this month, making it feel a little bit like old times:

Cera raises $150 million for UK/NHS expansion, platform AI development, and upscaling. The $150 million funding is split between equity and debt, via lead investors BDT & MSD Partners and Schroders Capitals, plus Earlymarket, Guinness Ventures, DigitalHealth, and Robin Klein, a private UK investors. Cera has raised a total of $407 million, with their last raise of $302 million in 2022. 

Cera supports a spectrum of in-home health through its proprietary AI-assisted carer platform. Their nurses and other staff carers use the app on phones (primarily) to direct care and monitor patients. AI and ML assists enable caregivers to view and react to changes in condition. Families can also view reporting on the app. The company claims results of daily savings of £1 million for the UK healthcare system, hospitalization reductions of up to 70%, a 20% reduction in patient falls, and hospital discharges that are up to five times faster. It supports an estimated 60,000 daily in-person healthcare visits across UK homes, partners with over 150 local governments, and two-thirds of NHS Integrated Care Systems. They also claim to be EBITDA positive (as of 2022) and free-cash-flow positive from last year. TechFundingNews, TechCrunch

Qventus raises $105 million in a Series D. The investment in the care operations and automation platform for over 115 health systems was led by KKR’s Next Generation Technology III Fund with Bessemer Venture Partners plus new strategic investors Northwestern Medicine, HonorHealth, and Allina Health. Qventus claims to be ‘AI-first’ for automating routine care and record tasks, increasing team productivity up to 50%. The new funding will be used to accelerate the development and commercialization of solutions powered by its AI Operational Assistants into new care settings beyond its Surgical Growth and Inpatient Capacity solutions. Total funding to date is $203 million over 10 rounds. Release, MedCityNews

A $40 million round for Solera Health gets them to a Series E. The insider round was co-led by payer group Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC). It also includes investors Adams Street, Cobalt Ventures, and Horizon Mutual Holdings, Inc. Funding to date totals $112 million. Solera’s HALO platform provides access to hundreds of digital health applications for payers and employers, including apps for virtual specialty care in areas such as hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes prevention, and weight management, to drive down the cost of care. Also announced was the confirmation of interim CEO John Santelli to the position. He joined Solera after nearly 30 years with UnitedHealth Group, departing as CIO. Release, MedCityNews

When giants meet…new AI models follow, with General Catalyst allying with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to develop AI tools for its portfolio companies. The focus will be on cloud services and generative AI using Amazon Bedrock, the ML application for building generative AI on AWS. This will be used for improving predictive analytics around patient treatment outcomes and insights into factors such as disease progression. Also mentioned are tools based on Anthropic and Mistral AI, along with securely trained health care-specific models. 

First up are the expanding Commure and Aidoc. Their specialized technology solutions like Copilot Suite and aiOS will be integrated with AWS’s AI and data capabilities. General Catalyst, besides investing in many healthcare and digital health companies, will be using this for their separate HATco, The Health Assurance Transformation Corporation. HATco was founded in October 2023 to develop an interoperability model for technology solutions, targeting health systems and payers. Mobihealthnews, Yahoo Finance/Global Data, FierceHealthcare

In the hot nexus of diabetes management and weight loss, Virta Health passed the $100 million in revenue threshold and growth of 60%. It’s remarkable given that Virta specializes in reversing Type 2 diabetes and obesity via nutrition modification and lifestyle changes. They’ve tweaked their approach into what happens after GLP-1 patients go off the drug, though they now manage GLP-1 prescribing for health plans, employers, and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). Their off-ramp is modeled after their Sustainable Weight Loss solution, Responsible Prescribing is designed as an alternative to GLP-1 drugs or as an off-ramp for patients moving off them to maintain their weight loss. Release

Virtual nursing provider VirtuAlly has received accreditation from The Joint Commission (JC). This relatively rare status for telehealth is based on continuous compliance with performance standards and commitment to providing safe and quality patient care. VirtuAlly provides 24/7 turnkey virtual nurse-patient monitoring, temporary virtual support, and consulting services. They also have added a new term to our lexicon, “tele-sitting”. Release