“UnitedHealth Group’s Optum business is paying more than $13 billion for software and data analytics firm Change Healthcare in a move to bolster the company’s efforts to improve health outcomes and population health, the healthcare giant said Wednesday.”
“Optum, a fast-growing part of UnitedHealth Group and key reason the company will eclipse $277 billion in total revenue this year, said Change Healthcare will become a part of the OptumInsight business ‘to provide software and data analytics, technology-enabled services and research, advisory and revenue cycle management offerings to help make health care work better for everyone…’”
“While UnitedHealth continues to be the nation’s largest health insurance company, selling commercial, Medicaid and Medicare Advantage plans, it’s finding growth on the medical care provider side of the healthcare system. Optum owns one of the nation’s largest pharmacy benefit managers in OptumRx as well as an array of medical care provider businesses, including doctor practices, surgery centers and urgent care sites across the country.”
“Witty has in the past said the Optum healthcare services unit is rolling out what it hopes will be a ‘city-by-city’ effort to make medical care more seamless to patients and that hundreds of clinics, surgery centers and urgent care assets the company has acquired will increasingly be ‘wired together’ in markets across the U.S.”
“In adding Change Healthcare, that effort is poised to accelerate.”
“’This opportunity is about advancing connectivity and accelerating innovations and efficiencies essential to a simpler, more intelligent and adaptive health system,’ said Neil de Crescenzo, president and chief executive of Change Healthcare, who will become OptumInsight’s CEO. ‘We share with Optum a common mission and values and importantly, a sense of urgency to provide our customers and those they serve with the more robust capacities this union makes possible…’” Read the full article here.
Source: UnitedHealth’s Optum To Buy Data Analytics Firm Change Healthcare In $13 Billion Deal – By Bruce Japsen, January 6, 2021. Forbes.
