Primary Care Champion: Kyna Fong

Kyna Fong has served as CEO of Elation Health since co-founding the company in 2010 as it seeks to deepen the connection between patients and clinicians.

The Primary Care Collaborative is delighted to honor Kyna Fong, CEO and Co-Founder of Elation Health, as its latest Primary Care Champion.

Founded in 2010, Elation positions itself as the leading platform for independent primary care, dedicated to deepening the connection between patients and clinicians. Fong started Elation after spending four years as a tenure-track professor in Stanford’s economics department.

Elation began as a way to support more primary care medical practices like Fong's own father's in Northern California. Helping her father open his practice, she called the experience an "opportunity to really see the frontlines of primary care."

Fong built Elation Health to be what she calls "clinical-first." This prioritizes an experience that emphasizes a strong patient-clinician relationship that delivers "high-quality personalized primary care."

Fong dug into the challenges facing primary care today. Amid a well-documented primary care clinician shortage, Fong argued that primary care clinicians are "not being paid well for the work that they do" and are "overwhelmed by the amount of administrative burden" they face.

Fong also criticized the current fee-for-service payment model. Calling it a "hamster wheel" that "much of primary care has gotten stuck on," she highlighted the need for population-based prospective payments.

Fong ultimately underscored the high value that primary care brings toward a comprehensive health care system. She labelled primary care a "critical type of health care" that produces "arguably the biggest return on investment in health care."