Geisinger Health System (GHS) is a regional health care provider to central, south-central and northeastern

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; (Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, Ma ...

. Headquartered in

Danville, Pennsylvania Danville is a borough in and the county seat of Montour County, Pennsylvania, United States, along the North Branch of the Susquehanna River. The population was 4,221 at the census. Danville is part of the Bloomsburg-Berwick micropolitan area. ...

, Geisinger services over 3 million patients in 45 counties.

History

Geisinger is named after Abigail Geisinger, widow of iron magnate George Geisinger. Its

primary care Primary care is the day-to-day healthcare given by a health care provider. Typically this provider acts as the first contact and principal point of continuing care for patients within a healthcare system, and coordinates other specialist car ...

facility is the

Geisinger Medical Center Geisinger Medical Center is a hospital in Danville, Pennsylvania. It is the primary hospital for the Danville-based Geisinger Health System, a primary chain of hospitals and clinics across northeastern and central Pennsylvania. Geisinger Life ...

(GMC) located in Danville, with nine other hospitals: Geisinger Bloomsburg Hospital in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, Geisinger

Wyoming Valley The Wyoming Valley is a historic industrialized region of Northeastern Pennsylvania. The region is historically notable for its influence in helping fuel the American Industrial Revolution with its many anthracite coal-mines. As a metropolitan ...

(GWV) and Geisinger South Wilkes-Barre - both located in Wilkes-Barre, Geisinger-Community Medical Center (GCMC) located in

Scranton Scranton is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Lackawanna County. With a population of 76,328 as of the 2020 U.S. census, Scranton is the largest city in Northeastern Pennsylvania, the Wyoming Vall ...

, Geisinger Jersey Shore Hospital (GJSH) located in Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania, Geisinger Lewistown Hospital (GLH), in Lewistown, Pennsylvania, Geisinger Muncy Medical Center (GMCM), in Muncy Pennsylvania, Geisinger Shamokin Community Hospital (GSACH) in Shamokin, Pennsylvania, and Geisinger St. Lukes in Orwigsburg, Pennsylvania. Geisinger has clinics throughout

northeastern The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each sepa ...

and western

, located in

Wilkes-Barre Wilkes-Barre ( or ) is a city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Luzerne County. Located at the center of the Wyoming Valley in Northeastern Pennsylvania, it had a population of 44,328 in the 2020 census. It is the seco ...

Pittston Pittston is a city in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is situated between Scranton and Wilkes-Barre in Northeastern Pennsylvania. The city gained prominence in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as an active anthracite coal ...

, Mountaintop, Nanticoke,

Wyoming Wyoming () is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho to the west, Utah to the southwest, and Colorado to the sou ...

Dallas Dallas () is the List of municipalities in Texas, third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of metropolitan statistical areas, fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 ...

Plains In geography, a plain is a flat expanse of land that generally does not change much in elevation, and is primarily treeless. Plains occur as lowlands along valleys or at the base of mountains, as coastal plains, and as plateaus or uplands. In ...

Kingston Kingston may refer to: Places * List of places called Kingston, including the five most populated: ** Kingston, Jamaica ** Kingston upon Hull, England ** City of Kingston, Victoria, Australia ** Kingston, Ontario, Canada ** Kingston upon Thames, ...

, and other surrounding cities and towns. Geisinger Health Plan, a subsidiary

health management organization In the United States, a health maintenance organization (HMO) is a medical insurance group that provides health services for a fixed annual fee. It is an organization that provides or arranges managed care for health insurance, self-funded heal ...

(HMO), was started in 1985. On December 4, 2012, it was announced that Geisinger Health System and Lewistown Hospital had signed a non-binding letter of intent for a merger. Geisinger's Frank Trembulak said the non-binding letter refers to the specifics of how the merger will work and that there is a "binding agreement to merge". Independent physicians have opposed a merger with Geisinger, stating that with the presence of a Geisinger clinic in Lewistown and with Geisinger offering health insurance, a monopoly might result from the merger, ultimately hurting instead of helping local healthcare. The full merger and integration of Geisinger-Lewistown Hospital into Geisinger Health System received final approval from the Pennsylvania Attorney General and the Pennsylvania Department of Health and the new Geisinger-Lewistown Hospital became effective on November 1, 2013. From 2001 through mid 2015, Glenn Steele served as Geisinger's president and chief executive officer. Steele left Geisinger in 2015, with David Feinberg joining as president and CEO. In December 2018, Jaewon Ryu was named interim president and CEO. Prior to the announcement, he previously served as the health system's executive vice president and chief medical officer since 2016.

About

Geisinger Health System serves over half a million patients across multiple states in the Northeastern United States. Geisinger's primary geographical area of coverage is central and northeastern

. As of September 2021, it operates 11 hospitals as well as a number of smaller clinical care facilities and pharmacies. The organization offers internal health insurance plans to the public within its coverage area. Geisinger also conducts medical research and operates both

Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine (GCSOM) is a private medical school associated with the Geisinger Health System and located in northeastern and north central Pennsylvania. GCSOM offers a community-based model of medical education wit ...

and the Geisinger-Lewistown School of Nursing. The organization also has a charitable arm, the Geisinger Foundation.

Programs and practices

In 2015, Geisinger launched a patient satisfaction program called ProvenExperience, which offers refunds of co-pays or deductibles to patients unhappy with their medical treatment or other aspects of care. In 2017, it started the Fresh Food Farmacy, a program that provides free healthy foods and nutrition advice to low-income patients with

diabetes Diabetes, also known as diabetes mellitus, is a group of metabolic disorders characterized by a high blood sugar level (hyperglycemia) over a prolonged period of time. Symptoms often include frequent urination, increased thirst and increased ...

. In 2018, Geisinger introduced a program that drives patients unable to arrange their own transportation to medical appointments or pharmacies. Geisinger incorporates

electronic health records An electronic health record (EHR) is the systematized collection of patient and population electronically stored health information in a digital format. These records can be shared across different health care settings. Records are shared throu ...

(EHRs) and

genomics Genomics is an interdisciplinary field of biology focusing on the structure, function, evolution, mapping, and editing of genomes. A genome is an organism's complete set of DNA, including all of its genes as well as its hierarchical, three-dim ...

into its healthcare practices. Geisinger first adopted EHRs in 1996. By 2002, it was using Tel-a-Nurse, a service that allowed patients to call and receive medical advice from nurses informed by EHRS. In 2007, Geisinger opened a genetic biobank and screening program called MyCode, which sequences the genetic code of volunteer patients to screen them for risk markers of diseases. As of 2018, MyCode had obtained genetic information from over 200,000 patient volunteers. This bank of genetic material has also been used for medical research purposes.

Research

In 1967, Geisinger was awarded a federal grant to study the effectiveness of medications to prevent heart attacks or their recurrence. In 1974, the Central Pennsylvania Chapter of the

Arthritis Foundation The Arthritis Foundation is a nonprofit organization that is dedicated to addressing the needs of people living with arthritis in the United States. There are more than 50 million adults and 300,000 children living with arthritis, the nation's l ...

awarded a grant to Geisinger to study the potential treatment of

Raynaud syndrome Raynaud syndrome, also known as Raynaud's phenomenon, eponymously named after the physician Auguste Gabriel Maurice Raynaud, who first described it in his doctoral thesis in 1862, is a medical condition in which the spasm of small arteries cau ...

with drugs normally used to treat high blood pressure at that time. Geisinger has a database of

(EHR), and set up a genetics research program called MyCode in 2007. The use of EHR allows

longitudinal study A longitudinal study (or longitudinal survey, or panel study) is a research design that involves repeated observations of the same variables (e.g., people) over short or long periods of time (i.e., uses longitudinal data). It is often a type of ...

of patient outcomes through a study called "DiscovEHR". The program uses gene sequencing by the biotechnology company

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is an American biotechnology company headquartered in Westchester County, New York. The company was founded in 1988. Originally focused on neurotrophic factors and their regenerative capabilities, giving rise to ...

. The

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U ...

awarded a grant of million to the research program in 2016. The program was expanded to include

whole exome sequencing Exome sequencing, also known as whole exome sequencing (WES), is a genomic technique for sequencing all of the protein-coding regions of genes in a genome (known as the exome). It consists of two steps: the first step is to select only the subset ...

in 2018. Using the patient volunteers' genetic data stored in its MyCode program, Geisinger has conducted or collaborated on genetic research studies aimed at identifying potential links between genetic variants and risk factors for certain diseases. Geisinger contributed data from 35,000 of its patients to a 2016

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hemisphere. It consiste ...

study that demonstrated linkages between

asthma Asthma is a long-term inflammatory disease of the airways of the lungs. It is characterized by variable and recurring symptoms, reversible airflow obstruction, and easily triggered bronchospasms. Symptoms include episodes of wheezing, c ...

and

fracking Fracking (also known as hydraulic fracturing, hydrofracturing, or hydrofracking) is a well stimulation technique involving the fracturing of bedrock formations by a pressurized liquid. The process involves the high-pressure injection of "frac ...

. In 2021, a Regeneron-led study partially based on genetic data from the MyCode biobank identified a genetic variant that appears to lower obesity risk.

Education

On January 1, 2017, Geisinger acquired the Commonwealth School of Medicine in

Scranton, Pennsylvania Scranton is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Lackawanna County. With a population of 76,328 as of the 2020 U.S. census, Scranton is the largest city in Northeastern Pennsylvania, the Wyoming V ...

. Opened in 2008, the school had struggled financially prior to its acquisition. Geisinger agreed to assume the school's nearly $40 million debt as part of the acquisition. Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine received a $3.4 million grant from the federal government in 2017 to promote diversity and provide opportunities for disadvantaged communities. In order to "fix the primary care shortage facing the organization", Geisinger announced a program in 2019 to cover full tuition plus a $2,000 monthly stipend for 40 students committing to work at Geisinger for at least four years after completing a

residency Residency may refer to: * Domicile (law), the act of establishing or maintaining a residence in a given place ** Permanent residency, indefinite residence within a country despite not having citizenship * Residency (medicine), a stage of postgrad ...

Facilities

As of August 2021, there are 11 major facilities operated by Geisinger Health System: *

(GMC) in Danville * Geisinger Janet Weis Children's Hospital in Danville * Geisinger Wyoming Valley Medical Center (GWV) in Plains Township ( Wilkes-Barre area) * Geisinger South Wilkes-Barre Hospital (GSWB) in downtown Wilkes-Barre * Geisinger - Shamokin Area Community Hospital (G-SACH) in Shamokin * Geisinger - Community Medical Center (GCMC) in

* Geisinger - Bloomsburg Hospital (GBH) in Bloomsburg * Geisinger - Lewistown Hospital (GLH) in Lewistown * Geisinger Jersey Shore Hospital in

Jersey Shore The Jersey Shore (known by locals simply as the Shore) is the coastal region of the U.S. state of New Jersey. Geographically, the term encompasses about of oceanfront bordering the Atlantic Ocean, from Perth Amboy in the north to Cape May P ...

* Geisinger St. Luke's Hospital in Orwigsburg * Geisinger Schuylkill County in Orwigsburg * Geisinger Marworth in Waverly

Financials

For comparison, in 2017 the Pennsylvania average operating margin and total margin were 5.15% and 6.62% respectively. The Pennsylvania average uncompensated care percent of NPR was 1.74%. The Pennsylvania average portion of NPR paid by Medicare and Medical Assistance was 34% and 14% respectively. The average payment per inpatient day for Medicare and Medical Assistance was $2,249 and $2,286 respectively, while other commercial payers paid an average of $4,843 per inpatient day.

References

External links

* {{authority control Healthcare in Pennsylvania Hospital networks in the United States Medical and health organizations based in Pennsylvania Trauma centers