The Geisinger Health System is a physician-led health care system of northeastern and central Pennsylvania with headquarters located in Danville, Pennsylvania.History of GeisingerDanville resident Abigail Geisinger, widow of iron magnate George Geisinger, used her fortune to build a hospital intended to be a regional medical center modeled on the Mayo Clinic.Its primary care facility is the Geisinger Medical Center (GMC) located in Danville, with three other hospitals; Geisinger Wyoming Valley (GWV) and Geisinger South Wilkes-Barre - both located in Wilkes-Barre, and Geisinger-Community Medical Center (GCMC) located in Scranton. There are numerous Geisinger clinics throughout northeastern and western Pennsylvania, located in Wilkes-Barre, Pittston, Mountaintop, Nanticoke, Wyoming, Scranton, Dallas, Plains, Kingston, and other surrounding cities and towns.Geisinger Health Plan, a subsidiary HMO, was started in 1985.Merger with Penn StateA milestone in the history of Geisinger Health System includes a failed merger with Penn State/Hershey Medical Center from July 1997 to November 1999. The merger of the two large health care organizations and subsequent failure has provided a valuable reference for other systems with similar plans. The ultimate collapse of the merger has been attributed to the leadership's failure to recognize challenges of cultural differences between the institutions and community acceptance. e.g. Academic physicians at the Hershey Medical Center were resistant to the delegation of practice management to which the Geisinger physicians had become accustomed.
