With Deal to Acquire Geisinger, Other Nonprofits, Kaiser Reveals Big Ambitions

Integrated insurer-provider Kaiser Permanente (KP) will acquire Geisinger Health, the Pennsylvania-based integrated health system and health insurance plan, as part of a new Kaiser venture that will aim to take over other regional nonprofit hospital systems. That new venture, Risant Health, will be an independent division of Kaiser and seek to orient its subsidiary hospital systems toward payer-agnostic, value-based reimbursement. Experts tell AIS Health, a division of MMIT, that the deal accelerates and intensifies the ongoing trend of multistate, cross-market hospital system consolidation. 

According to Kaiser spokesperson Stephen Shivinsky, Geisinger is the inaugural member of Risant Health, “a new nonprofit organization created by Kaiser Foundation Hospitals to expand and accelerate the adoption of value-based care in diverse, multi-payer, multi-provider community health system environments….Risant Health will operate separately and distinctly from Kaiser Permanente’s core integrated care and coverage model while building upon Kaiser Permanente’s 80 years of expertise in value-based care.”