Dr. Jaewon Ryu, who has served as interim president and CEO of Danville, Pennsylvania-based Geisinger for the past six months, has been approved by the health system's board of directors to take on the role full time. He's just the seventh chief executive in Geisinger’s century-plus existence.

WHY IT MATTERS
Ryu, who had served as Geiseinger's chief medical officer since September 2016, replaces Dr. David Feinberg, who was tapped by Google this past year to lead an effort to unify and innovate its various health projects after three years as Geisinger CEO.

Prior to his time as Geisinger's CMO, Ryu was president of integrated care delivery for Humana, where he oversaw the insurer's owned and joint ventured care delivery practices. He also worked for its Transcend Insights subsidiary, helping practices use population health tools for value-based care.

Ryu, an emergency medicine physician, was also formerly the chief medical officer at University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System in Chicago. In addition he's held top positions at Kaiser-Permanente, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and was a White House Fellow at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

THE LARGER TREND
Geisinger, which serves more than 1.5 million patients in Pennsylvania and New Jersey with 13 hospitals, a health plan, two research centers and a medical school, has long been a pioneer new modes of care delivery and new approaches to patient experience and value-based care.

Whether it's co-developing FHIR-enabled patient-facing apps with Merck, leading new approaches to precision medicine and population health, or continuing the innovations of its ProvenCare program – which includes provisions to give refunds to patients unhappy with their care experience (ProvenExperience) and "surgical redesign" to speed healing while reducing opioid use (ProvenRecovery) – the health system had been at the forefront of new and patient-centric strategies for quality improvement.

ON THE RECORD
"Dr. Ryu has a strong understanding of the Geisinger organization, in addition to broad clinical and management expertise," said Geisinger Board Chairman John C. Bravman, in a statement. "In his recent roles as Chief Medical Officer and as interim CEO, Dr. Ryu has fostered a culture at Geisinger that pushes us to bring the most innovative care to our patients and communities. He has driven tremendous progress here, and we are confident he will continue to do an excellent job leading our path forward.”

"The country looks to Geisinger as a leader in bringing world-class care and coverage to everyone we serve," said Ryu. "I am incredibly proud of the progress we are driving in expanding our value-based care model. Geisinger has a bright future ahead, and I am committed to building upon our legacy working with our dedicated and talented physicians and staff."

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