Diving back in

Not long after leaving the helm of JumpStart — one of Ohio’s top business accelerators — Julie Jacono ’94, MBA ’98, is steering her own startup into the turbulent waters of Ohio’s healthcare industry.

Her company, OpusHealth, promises to save hospitals millions by automating administrative work. It caught the attention of Crain’s Cleveland Business, which noted the startup quickly secured $1.3 million in funding and a partnership with a Pittsburgh company that streamlines automation and technology support for health care providers.

“OpusHealth seeks to break into the healthcare market by providing cost savings for healthcare providers as the industry faces financial headwinds and imminent Medicaid cuts,” Crain’s reported in January, adding that Jacono may be uncommonly suited to help.

Before becoming CEO of JumpStart in 2024, Jacono spent most of her career in hospitals as an administrator and an innovator. The biomedical engineer held several leadership roles at MetroHealth, the county hospital system, and left as executive vice president and chief strategy officer.

She said her decision to depart JumpStart in July of 2025 — after less than two years as CEO — was spurred by passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which imposed sharp reductions to Medicaid and upended Affordable Care Act marketplaces.

One month later, she launched OpusHealth, which is based in CWRU’s 11000 Cedar Startup Incubator. Jacono described her company as a managed services and consortium firm designed to connect healthcare providers to AI and technology to help cut administrative costs.

“Ohio is a healthcare market. It has so much incredible healthcare, and so many people who understand healthcare,” Jacono told Crain’s. “So the thought that I could build a company here in Ohio that could be part of a national solution for transformation was very exciting to me.”