The promise of value-based care has always rested on one critical pillar: consistency without compromise.
That is exactly what Risant Health, the nonprofit venture backed by Kaiser Permanente, is trying to operationalize across its network — turning electronic health records (EHRs) into engines for standardizing high-value care.
When Kaiser folded Geisinger Health into Risant in 2024, few expected such rapid integration of digital care protocols. Yet, within a year, Risant has embedded value-based care guides directly into EHR workflows — guiding clinicians through evidence-based diagnostic pathways and treatment decisions in real time.
The Model: Embedding Evidence into Every Click
Instead of leaving clinical consistency to chance, Risant’s model allows a physician to open the EHR, choose a specialty, and instantly access a tailored list of conditions with standardized test orders and follow-up recommendations.
This move has quietly achieved what decades of committee meetings have struggled to do — translate population-level evidence into bedside practice.
The early outcomes are telling:
- A 7% reduction in primary care visits tied to specialty referrals, freeing up roughly 10,000 specialty appointments annually.
- A measurable increase in virtual and primary care utilization, improving patient access while maintaining cost efficiency.
For a system as complex as Geisinger, those numbers mean more than productivity — they signal a structural shift toward precision standardization.
Beyond the Algorithm: The Human Impact
As Dr. Benjamin Hohmuth, Geisinger’s Chief Medical Informatics Officer, noted, whether a patient is in California, Pennsylvania, or North Carolina, the care experience should reflect the same commitment to comprehensive, coordinated care.
This alignment does not just streamline workflows; it restores the essence of equity — ensuring geography no longer dictates quality.
When value-based care becomes embedded into the clinician’s daily digital environment, variation narrows, disparities shrink, and decision-fatigue declines.
That is the operational foundation of scalable quality.
Reducing Administrative Drag
Risant is also investing in ambient listening technology to ease clinicians’ documentation burdens. By integrating AI-driven listening tools that automatically summarize and populate notes, physicians spend less time typing and more time connecting.
The next step — as Risant CEO Dr. Jaewon Ryu explained — is to enable this same technology to guide decision-making by surfacing the most relevant clinical and research data during patient encounters.
If successful, this would make the EHR not just a record-keeper but a real-time intelligence partner.
Scaling a Vision for Value
Risant’s latest acquisition — Cone Health in North Carolina — marks another step toward building a network of community-oriented systems aligned under one value-based philosophy.
Kaiser’s CEO Greg Adams summarized the vision: in two years, Risant hopes to showcase even more examples of measurable improvement and new systems brought under its umbrella.
But the strategic question remains:
Can such a model scale without losing its regional character — the local physician relationships, the cultural nuances, the contextual insights that make care personal?
If Risant succeeds, it may offer a blueprint for balancing standardization with personalization — the elusive sweet spot in modern healthcare.
Final Thoughts
The Risant model signals where healthcare strategy is heading: technology-enabled, evidence-anchored, and value-aligned.
Its success will depend on whether digital tools can harmonize care without flattening its humanity — because in the end, value-based care must not just measure outcomes but elevate experience.
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