Two separate readers — on opposite sides of the nation — have now asked me if there’s any truth to rumors that UnitedHealth is interested in acquiring physician practices as a stepping stone into accountable care organizations. So I asked UnitedHealth and was referred by their PR department to the reply UnitedHealth chief executive Stephen Hemsley gave to a similar question from CRT Capital analyst Sheryl Skolnick during the company’s third-quarter earnings call with investors.
Skolnick: “Might we perhaps see United step outside of its historic diversified business activities and move more directly into directly affecting healthcare decision making, spending, provider relationships through contracting or outright acquisitions.”
Hemsley: “Our care management initiatives have increasingly more integrated into the delivery community broadly. We have had initiatives like Evercare for many years which are clearly direct care initiatives and areas that we work with in recent years in terms of southwest medical clinics and so forth….So I don’t know what I could tell you beyond that. We continue to see if we can be helpful across the broad system and in some instances that takes us into deeper relationships in the primary and specialty areas and we’ll continue to probe that.”
Sounds like a definite maybe.
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