From posting double-digit growth in the first quarter of 2023 to acquiring a New York.-based multispecialty physician group, here are eight headlines about Optum that Becker's has reported since March 22.
1. Optum Ventures joined a $75 million funding round for autism care provider Cortica.
2. Optum reported that it has seen double-digit growth in its first quarter with $8 billion in total consolidated earnings on revenue reaching $54.1 billion, a 25 percent increase over the same period last year.
3. Optum now provides financing for healthcare organization customers who need advanced funds.
4. Optum now employs or is affiliated with more than 70,000 physicians — significantly more than St. Louis-based Ascension (49,000), Nashville, Tenn.-based HCA Healthcare (47,000) and Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente (24,000).
5. Optum purchased Middletown, N.Y.-based Crystal Run Healthcare, a multispecialty physician group with more than 400 providers across more than 30 locations.
6. Former Optum Pacific West Amar Desai, MD, returned to Optum's parent company UnitedHealth after serving as president of healthcare delivery at CVS Health for less than six months. Dr. Desai is now serving as an adviser to United Health CEO Andrew Witty.
7. The U.K.'s Competition and Markets Authority referred UnitedHealth Group's proposed acquisition of the health technology firm EMIS Group for an in-depth investigation. Bordeaux UK Holdings II — a unit of UnitedHealth's Optum business — agreed to acquire the U.K.-based EMIS Group in January 2022 in a $1.51 billion deal.
8. The Justice Department is no longer pursuing an appeal to block UnitedHealth Group's $7.8 billion purchase of Change Healthcare that closed in October. The government sued over the deal in February 2022, claiming a merger between Change and OptumInsight would give UnitedHealth "unprecedented monopoly power" over claims data and payments.