UnitedHealth's Optum has the attention of healthcare providers, insurers and consumers as the company continues to grow in non-traditional ways.
Over the past three months, Optum and its companies have made key acquisitions and entered into pioneering partnerships in the healthcare space. Its leaders have also outlined strategy for continued growth in the future.
Here are seven things Optum has done in the past 90 days.
Optum reported $28 billion in second quarter revenue, a 13.4 percent growth year-over-year. OptumHealth's revenues jumped 20.3 percent year-over-year to $7.1 billion in the second quarter, serving around 95 million people. The average revenue per consumer increased 17 percent in the quarter, which the company attributes to growth in value-based care arrangements. The company released its quarterly report on July 18.
Optum and John Muir Health in Walnut Creek, Calif., revealed a new kind of partnership on July 17 aimed at allowing John Muir to remain independent while providing quality, affordable healthcare. Optum will manage nonclinical functions including IT, revenue cycle management, analytics, purchasing and claims processing to support John Muir's efforts to improve care and the patient experience. The technology solutions are designed to improve administrative operations efficiency, accelerate the health system's value-based care efforts and more fully engage healthcare consumers. As a result of the partnership, Optum is taking on around 540 John Muir Health employees who will now work for Optum but support efforts at the health system.
On June 28, UnitedHealth Group named Daniel Schumacher president and COO of Optum after former president Dirk McMahon was promoted to CEO of UnitedHealthcare. Mr. Schumacher will oversee all Optum operations. He previously served as president and COO of UnitedHealthcare.
On June 19, Optum completed its $4.3 billion acquisition of DaVita medical Group. Post-acquisition, OptumCare serves approximately 16 million patients and 80 health plans.
In early June, UnitedHealth CFO John Rex spoke at the Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference about OptumHealth's plan to grow OptumCare into a $100 billion business over the next decade. The company aims to serve more patients with Medicare Advantage plans at full risk as well as purchase more surgery centers, primary care and urgent care practices. However, the company does not have plans to purchase hospitals.
Caitlin Zulla, CFO for Surgical Care Affiliates, an OptumCare company, told CFO.com in May that SCA has partnerships with 215 ASCs and plans to add 20 more centers in 2019. The company currently has at least one value-based contract at 60 percent of its centers and is focused on negotiating more with insurance companies and Medicare. She also said around 20 percent of SCA's net revenue comes from patients.
In May, Optum invested $16 million into San Jose, Calif.-based startup Health[at]Scale, a machine learning solution for precision medicine. The technology uses artificial intelligence to match patients with providers. The company currently has hospital system, insurer and self-ensured employer clients.
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