Washington, D.C.-based Risant Health, a nonprofit organization that is part of Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente, completed the acquisition of its first health system, Danville, Pa.-based Geisinger, on March 31.
Here are seven things to know about Risant Health:
1. Kaiser Permanente announced the creation of Risant Health and the plans to acquire Geisinger in April 2023. Risant said it "aims to expand and accelerate the adoption of value-based care in "diverse, multipayer, multiprovider, community-based health system environments."
2. Risant Health plans to acquire four or five more health systems and get to a total revenue of $30 billion to $35 billion over the next five years.
3. Jaewon Ryu, MD, is transitioning from the role of president and CEO of Geisinger to serve as the first CEO of Risant Health. Dr. Ryu previously worked at Kaiser as an emergency medicine physician and later as the associate medical director of the Rockville, Md.-based Mid-Atlantic Permanente Medical Group.
4. Dr. Ryu told Becker's in May that Geisinger will remain in local control. He said Risant "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 will not 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."
5. Risant will make a minimum of $2 billion available to Geisinger — inclusive of any Geisinger internally generated and Risant Health funds — as needed through Dec. 31, 2028, to support necessary hospital, ambulatory facility, technology, and other strategic and routine capital.
6. Geisinger posted a net income of $366.6 million in 2023 after posting a net loss of $834 million in 2022, according to its financial report for the year ended Dec. 31. The health system said inflationary pressures that had a "profound impact" from 2020 through 2022 were partially mitigated in 2023. It attributed this to management initiatives that targeted the inflationary pressures and successfully reduced monthly run rates of contract labor hours and rates.
7. Greg Adams, chair and CEO of Kaiser Permanente, told Becker's in August that competing with disruptors was part of the reason for starting Risant Health.
"As healthcare emerges from the worst effects of the pandemic, we are not seeing sufficient movement toward coming together, but rather a resumption of the pre-pandemic business trends of consolidation, volume-driven care and a worsening of the fragmentation and gaps in our healthcare system," Mr. Adams said. "While some new players share our vision of integrated value-based care for all, we see other new and disruptive market entrants whose business models seem aimed at serving just the healthiest people, which increases fragmentation and ultimately increases the cost of care for everyone."