Jul 10, 2009 | Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology
List of recommendations based on UnitedHealth’s extensive database and experience
Every sector of the healthcare industry is offering both Congress and the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) advice on how to reform the system to improve quality of care, while reducing costs. Too often, the search for ways to save money that can be redirected to covering uninsured is a game of taking money from one existing health service and shifting it to another.
Recently UnitedHealth Group (NYSE:UNH) stepped into this debate over how to save money. In important ways, it is better positioned to provide this advice than most other entities. For example, UnitedHealth Group is the nation’s largest insurer in terms of revenue. UNH funds and organizes care for 70 million Americans. It arranges $115 billion in health care services provided by 5,000 hospitals and 650,000 physicians nationwide. Because of this, UNH’s Center for Modernization and Reform has collected more data on clinical services provided and resulting healthcare outcomes than anyone else.
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Jul 6, 2009 | Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology
Rescinding health policies of 20,000 people in past five years saved health insurers $300 million
For years, Americans have heard news stories about the sick patient whose health insurance policy was rescinded in the midst of a health crisis. Now comes public acknowledgement—at a Congressional hearing no less—that this business practice exists!
Executives from three of the nation’s largest health insurers admitted to this practice when testifying at a Congressional investigation recently. Observers believe the surprisingly candid acknowledgement about health insurance recissions pretty much guarantees insurers will be excluded from the health care reform debate. It may even ensure inclusion of a government health insurance plan in the final legislation which passes. (more…)
Dec 26, 2008 | Digital Pathology, Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology
On December 1, UnitedHealth Group (NYSE:UNH) unveiled its www.myoptumhealth.com solution. This is an upgraded web-based service that allows consumers to create and manage their own digital health record (DHR).
It’s widely accepted that conversion of medical records to digital format could improve medical outcomes and reduce healthcare costs dramatically. One unexpected development on that road to the universal electronic medical record (EMR) has been the well-financed efforts of companies like Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) to offer digital personal health records (PHRs) to consumers via sophisticated Web sites. Now comes the major health insurer, UnitedHealth, with its DHR offering for consumers.
Like Google Health and Microsoft’s HealthVault, UnitedHealth’s myoptumhealth is free to consumers and allows them to create and manage their own digital health solution. However, unlike those two competitors, which have lined up affiliated services for its users, myoptumhealth is organized to offer consumers services provided by various UnitedHealth business entities.
Google Health and Microsoft’s HealthVault are partnering with medical providers to offer patients the ability to upload their records from provider files, and provide a host of online medical services, such as Allscripts ePrescribe, a free, Web-based prescription solution for physicians. The sites also provide consultation with medical experts; link patients with providers and related services, like TrialX, which matches patients with clinical trials; and provide a database of information on health topics.
HealthVault, which was launched in 2007, has more than 100 participating provider partners, including leaders in health information technology, such as Kaiser Permanente. Launched earlier this year, Google Health’s partner list is not yet as extensive but growing quickly, and includes medical technology leader, the Cleveland Clinic; national pharmacy chains CVS, Walgreens and Longs Drugs; and laboratory testing giant Quest Diagnostics Incorporated (NYSE:DGX).
It is still too early to gauge whether medical laboratories and imaging providers will be willing to partner with these Web-based DHR services. Because of the importance of lab test data for any patient’s health record, Google Health, HealthVault, and myoptumhealth recognize the need to have clinical laboratories and imaging providers upload test results to patients’ digital health records and digitally sign them as evidence of authenticity. Access to lab results increases the value of DHRs to patients, enabling them to leverage the data in healthcare applications, ask their medical providers informed questions, and monitor their own health status by comparing lab tests over time.
While only time will tell, a positive indicator of consumer support is increased interest in online health information. Visits to health Websites rose 21% last year-more than four times the rate of total U.S, Internet population, according to comScore, a Reston, Virginia-based firm that measures digital usage.
Related Information:
UnitedHealth Takes On Microsoft, Google With Online Health Venture
Google Health: Is It Good For You?
Jan 3, 2007 | Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology
New Year’s Day 2007 marked more than the start of the New Year. It was also the effective date for a new exclusive national laboratory services contract for Laboratory Corporation of America with UnitedHealth Group. Also on New Year’s Day, Quest Diagnostics lost its status as a national laboratory provider for UnitedHealth. (See the Dark Daily “United Health Disrupts the National Contract Status Quo Between the Two Blood Brothers” from October 4, 2007.)
Although New Year’s Day was the effective date for both major contract changes, the two national laboratories turned up the competition more than six weeks earlier. In New York City and selected cities around the United States, LabCorp and Quest have run radio ads and newspaper advertisements to get their message out to the public and the physician community. As well, LabCorp has scrambled to create the service organization it needs to compete for UnitedHealth beneficiaries in such cities as New York and Chicago.
Dark Daily observes that these advertising efforts by LabCorp and Quest Diagnostics represents the largest consumer advertising blitz ever mounted by clinical laboratories. The Internet is also now a marketing channel. Lab directors and pathologists interested in how LabCorp and Quest Diagnostics are advertising themselves in this battle over UnitedHealth patients can see the full media campaigns of both companies. Quest Diagnostics established the Web site “MyLabIsQuest.com” as an information center for physicians and patients. On this Web site, it has posted radio ads and print advertisements run during this advertising campaign.
Similarly, LabCorp created “ChooseLabCorp.com” as its Web site to present information to physicians and patients about the new UnitedHealth contract. This Web site contains radio ads, public statements, and other information about LabCorp. Of interest to lab executives and pathologists, LabCorp has created a sign-up page and a LabCorp welcome kit for physicians.
Now that the UnitedHealth-LabCorp national contract is effective, it means that the flow of reimbursement dollars will begin to change for both LabCorp and Quest Diagnostics. As the exclusive national network provider, LabCorp is working aggressively to sign up as many physician accounts as possible. At the same time, Quest Diagnostics is working just as aggressively to convince physicians to continue using it, even though it is an out-of-network laboratory for most UnitedHealth plans.
Related Articles:
United Health: Quest is “Out”-LabCorp Is “In”, The Dark Report, Vol. XIII, No. 14, October 16, 2006.
“LabCorp Selected Exclusive National Laboratory for UnitedHealthcare; Will also Develop and Manage Lab Networks Selectively Across the United States”
“Quest Diagnostics to No Longer Be a National Contracted Provider of Lab Services to UnitedHealthcare Effective 2007”
“Bio-Reference Laboratories Announces Extension of Provider Participation Agreement with United Healthcare to Include Oxford Health Plans Effective January 2007”
Oct 11, 2006 | Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology
There was plenty of reaction to last week’s news that UnitedHealth Group had awarded an exclusive, ten-year, national lab testing contract to Laboratory Corporation of America. That contract award excluded Quest Diagnostics Incorporated.
Across the laboratory industry, pathologists and lab directors are keenly interested to learn how this may affect the market for physicians’ office-based lab testing in their communities. Phones and e-mails have been flying into our offices with questions and comments. Two words describe the general reaction to this announcement: “total surprise.” That’s because laboratory professionals understand the range of challenges that UnitedHealth and LabCorp must overcome if this exclusive national lab testing contract is to prove successful.
Even the investment community was not certain how to understand this startling development- but pundits did seize the chance to engage in word play. At BusinessWeek online, the headline was “A Negative Result for Quest Diagnostics.” Over at The Motley Fool, the UnitedHealth contract award story was titled “Great Chemistry at LabCorp.”
However, the harshest criticism came from TheStreet.com. It has a regular feature named “The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week.” Listed at number four for last week was Quest Diagnostics Incorporated. TheStreet.com noted that Quest Diagnostic’s CEO, Surya Mohapatra had told the financial community that, following one year of negotiations with UnitedHealth, it had suddenly “changed direction” and demanded the right to make an eight-year deal. The Street.com continued “‘If we had signed that contract,’ Mohapatra bristled, according to Dow Jones, ‘it would have been irresponsible not only for us as a company but for the whole industry.'”
TheStreet.com next observed rather dryly that “LabCorp investors are surely applauding that principled stand.”
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It then rated the Quest Diagnostics situation thusly:
“Dumb-o-Meter score: 85. ‘Choosing a diagnostic lab with a focus on patients and quality makes a difference for your health,’ Mohapatra warns.” |
It is not often that events in the laboratory industry catch the attention of Wall Street. It is even less common for a laboratory company to do something that earns it recognition on a list of “The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week.” Judging by the 18% drop in Quest Diagnostics’ share price that followed news of the UnitedHealth contract, it seems that a number of smart investors believe LabCorp made the smartest move in this round of the chess game.
At Dark Daily, we are of the opinion that the new UnitedHealth lab testing contract strategy will be long-term negative for the entire laboratory industry. If that proves true, then both Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp will have more to lose in coming years than any immediate gains as a result of this contracting strategy.
