Since Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente announced April 26 that it will acquire Geisinger in a deal that will make the Danville, Pa.-based health system the first to join Risant Health, Kaiser's CEO Greg Adams has spoken at the AHIP 2023 conference, and Geisinger CEO Jaewon Ryu, MD, has spoken to Becker's and elsewhere about the new nonprofit organization.
Here are five things the CEOs have said about Risant Health:
"It's not about becoming Kaiser Permanente"
Mr. Adams said that Risant Health is a separate organization that is about "bringing the expertise of Kaiser Permanente into community settings, partnering with the health plan, partnering with the multiprovider groups, etc., and moving value-based care, population health, community health forward in this country."
A "turbo-boost" for Geisinger
Dr. Ryu said Geisinger will remain in local control if the transaction is approved. Risant Health "takes everything that people are familiar with and love about Geisinger and builds on that to bolster it and sort of give it that turbo-boost, if you will, enhancing all those capabilities that I described earlier." He said the transition won't involve layoffs, but over time, as it looks to improve quality and lower the cost of care, Geisinger will "look at staffing models of tomorrow as opposed to only staffing models of yesterday."
Risant Health's origins
Mr. Adams said Kaiser was in the middle of a strategic planning process when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. He said the pandemic "kind of peeled back the constructs and allowed us to look pretty candidly at ourselves and healthcare against the country."
"One of the things that we came to terms with was, as good as we are, as much as we love our model, it's not the only way to lead and be in a value-based organization," he said. "And we believe that in terms of what we sometimes call our secret sauce — or how we do what we do, and there's so many components of that — that we can bring those forward into other settings, in this case in the community health systems."
What success for Risant Health will look like
Dr. Ryu said in a very simple sense, success will be evaluated through better measures of health across more populations.
"For example, success could be lower blood sugars in diabetic patients, fewer ER or hospital visits for those with congestive heart failure or earlier detection of cancers through more effective preventive screening rates," he said.
Geisinger's succession plan
Dr. Ryu will become the CEO of Risant Health, which will be based in Washington, D.C. Kaiser's deal to acquire Geisinger is expected to close in 2024, pending regulatory approval.
"While no definitive plans have been made, there will be a formal process to select a new CEO at the appropriate time, just as we have with prior leadership transitions," Dr. Ryu said.