Geisinger Health System in Danville, Pennsylvania, has made headlines recently for two projects.
The first is a forthcoming pilot program aimed at helping patients get to medical appointments on time. CMO Dr. Jaewon Ryu spoke about the program earlier this week at a Geisinger-sponsored event, according to The Daily Item.
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The health system plans to work with rabbittransit, a regional transportation provider, to provide rides to help individuals make it to their appointments. Ryu noted the initiative will be particularly useful due to the more than 140,000 Geisinger patients who didn’t show up to appointments last year. Additionally, some of the population Geisinger serves lives in rural areas, making access and transportation issues more challenging.
WNEP reported the pilot will launch next month.
The interest in non-emergency medical transportation is nothing new. This month, Uber launched Uber Health, a service that allows healthcare organizations to order rides for patients to get to and from appointments. Lyft struck a deal with Allscripts to help integrate its service into EHRs so booking the car service can be a seamless part of healthcare appointments.
In other recent Geisinger news, researchers from the Pennsylvania health system unveiled the results of a study conducted with scientists from Regeneron Genetics Center.
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The findings are published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The investigators found a gene variant that’s associated with a reduction in the risk for chronic liver disease.
The research utilized DNA information from 46,544 Geisinger MyCode Community Health Initiative participants, as well as data from their medical records. MyCode is a program focused on precision medicine. It allows patients at Geisinger locations in Pennsylvania and New Jersey to give a blood sample and donate their DNA for research purposes. They also consent to researchers accessing their sequenced DNA and records.
Tooraj Mirshahi, a coauthor of the study and a Geisinger associate professor in the department of functional and molecular genomics, explained the results of the study in a statement:
We have discovered a genetic change that alters the function of a liver protein, leading to protection from some liver diseases. This is exciting news because it means that future therapies that mimic the effect of this genetic change could have the same protective effect against liver disease.
Photo: Pixtum, Getty Images
