Risant Health is implementing value-based care strategies originally developed by Kaiser Permanente within its partner organizations, Geisinger Health in Pennsylvania and Cone Health in North Carolina. Jaewon Ryu, the chief executive officer of Risant, stated that the initiative aims to introduce greater consistency and system-wide coordination to healthcare environments that typically involve multiple providers and payers.
Ryu, who holds both medical and legal degrees, emphasized that thoughtful consistency is essential for improving patient outcomes. He noted that variability in hospital care often leads to inconsistent experiences for patients. To address this, Risant was established by the Kaiser Foundation Hospitals in 2023 to serve as a testing ground for adapting Kaiser’s integrated model to more complex, pluralistic healthcare settings.
The organization’s efforts have been detailed in a recent article published in NEJM Catalyst. According to the publication, early results at Geisinger Community Medical Center in Scranton, Pennsylvania, show a reduction in average inpatient length of stay. Between February 2025 and September 2025, the average stay decreased by 0.14 days, dropping from 5.29 to 5.15 days. Among patients discharged to skilled nursing facilities, the reduction was even more pronounced at 0.91 days, without increasing the overall utilization of such facilities.
Ryu described shorter hospital stays as a key indicator of quality, patient experience, and affordability. He credited a digital triage tool for helping to resolve clinical issues more quickly. This system utilizes dynamic questioning and data from electronic health records to assess symptoms, identify potential conditions, and direct patients to the most appropriate level of care.
Additional early metrics cited in the NEJM Catalyst article include a 5.2% decrease in referrals from primary care physicians to specialists. Ryu characterized these figures as positive signs that the adopted practices are having an effect. The goal is to set a precedent for other health systems seeking to improve efficiency and standardization across diverse care networks.
