Sept 1 (Reuters) – UnitedHealth’s insurance unit said on Tuesday that a broad range of conditions will no \u200clonger need prior approval, effective October 1, as \u200cit aims to eliminate prior authorization for 30% of healthcare services by \u200bthe end of this year. <\/p>\n
Here are the details: <\/p>\n
\u2022 The reduction spans a broad mix of services across multiple clinical specialties, including cardiology, genetic and laboratory testing, chiropractic care, physical, occupational \u200cand speech therapy, orthopedic \u2060and musculoskeletal procedures, among others. <\/p>\n
\u2022 The prior authorization requirements are being eliminated across its commercial \u2060plans, Medicare Advantage for older adults and individual insurance under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, and some \u200bother types \u200bof plans. <\/p>\n
\u2022 Health insurers have \u200bbeen taking measures to \u200csimplify their requirements for prior authorization on medicines and medical services after complaints from patients and doctors over excessive paperwork that can delay or even deny needed care. <\/p>\n
\u2022 The actions are designed to reduce unnecessary paperwork, make information easier \u200cto understand and allow patients and \u200bcare providers more time to \u200bfocus on care, UnitedHealthcare \u200bsaid. <\/p>\n
\u2022 The company is also reducing administrative \u200crequirements for eligible rural hospitals and \u200baffiliated providers \u200bthrough a rural prior authorization waiver program scheduled to begin on November 1. <\/p>\n
\u2022 UnitedHealthcare is speeding payments by \u200bup to 50% \u200cfor about 1,400 rural hospitals and Critical Access Hospitals \u200bin the third quarter. <\/p>\n
(Reporting by Sriparna Roy in \u200bBengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sept 1 (Reuters) – UnitedHealth’s insurance unit said on Tuesday that a broad range of conditions will no…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1036928,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[35],"tags":[18536,414862,210,1141,1142,7045,125654,1539,131607,414861,414860,414859,414863,67,70258,132,68],"class_list":["post-1036927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-18536","tag-critical-access-hospitals","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare","tag-obamacare","tag-october-1","tag-of","tag-reuters","tag-sept-1","tag-shinjini-ganguli","tag-sriparna-roy","tag-the-end-of-this-year","tag-united-states","tag-unitedhealthcare","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117196008042435166","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1036927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1036927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1036927\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1036928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1036927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1036927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1036927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}