Dive Brief:
- Danville, Pennsylvania-based Geisinger's board of directors appointed Jaewon Ryu as its president and CEO effective July 1. Ryu has served as the integrated health system's interim chief executive since November 2018 and will be the seventh CEO in Geisinger's 104 years of operation, the company announced Thursday.
- Ryu was Geisinger's executive vice president and chief medical officer beginning in September 2016. He came to the health system from Humana, where he was the president of integrated care delivery and managed the payer's owned and joint-ventured care delivery assets.
- Ryu succeeds David Feinberg, who left Geisinger in January to lead health strategy at Google after reportedly turning down a position at Amazon out of a desire to remain loyal to the 13-hospital system.
Dive Insight:
Ryu's temporary position was made permanent following an "exhaustive national search" that included "some of the brightest, most accomplished health care leaders in the country," Geisinger Board Chairman John Bravman said in a statement. "He has driven tremendous progress here, and we are confident that he will continue to do an excellent job leading our path forward."
Last year was busy for the health system as it built out health initiatives focused on managing cost of care in the community, including its Fresh Food Farmacy and offering patients whole-exome sequencing for free through MyCodeCommunity Health.
Geisinger spent the first half of this year rounding out its C-suite and pursuing joint ventures. David Vawdrey, a a biomedical informatics executive, was named chief data informatics officer earlier this month.
In February, Geisinger announced a home health and hospice partnership with AtlantiCare to deliver care in the home for those with 24/7 or end-of-life care needs. Geisinger also completed a joint venture with Highmark Health in March that's been in the works since May 2017 to improve access to primary care, specialty care and acute inpatient care in north central Pennsylvania.
While serving as Geisinger's CMO, Ryu led the redesign of its primary care model (which expanded appointment times for patients 65 years and older from 20 to 40 minutes) and implemented the Geisinger At Home program, which brings team-based care into the home for medically complex patients.
"I am incredibly proud of the progress we are driving in expanding our value-based care model," Ryu, who is a practicing emergency room physician and a commissioner with the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, said. "Geisinger has a bright future ahead, and I am committed to building upon our legacy."
Geisinger serves an estimated 1.5 million patients in central, south-central and northeastern Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey. It includes 13 hospitals, a 600,000-member health plan, two research centers and the Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine, along with 32,000 employees and 1,800 employed physicians.
In 2018, the integrated health system posted an operating income of $183.9 million on revenue of $6.54 billion, up from roughly $160 million of operating income on $6 billion of revenue the year prior.
For the nine months ending March 31, Geisinger reported a similarly strong balance sheet, cash flow and operating performance. The nonprofit provider recorded a $134 million operating profit, with a total operating revenue of $5.3 billion.
According to its financial filing, Geisinger plans to continue growing population health management initiatives and exploring joint partnerships, along with growing high-acuity, fee-for-service business by increasing penetration of those services in Geisinger's market.