The COVID-19 pandemic may result in a long-term decrease in-patient utilization of hospital emergency rooms. During a conference call with financial analysts to discuss the company’s second-quarter earnings, executives from UnitedHealth Group discussed that prospect.
- Covid effects: UnitedHealth executives believe that health plan enrollees skipped important checkups and sick visits because of social distancing efforts, medical office procedure changes, and other pandemic-related factors. The company is assuming that it will eventually receive extra claims because of the impact of deferred, high-value care.
- Low-value care: Andrew Witty, the Minnetonka, Minnesota-based health insurer’s CEO mentioned emergency room use in response to an analyst’s question about whether some of the health care skipped as a result of the pandemic may have been low-value care.
- Warning signals: Witty said he sees tantalizing signals about emergency room use in the claim trend figures. Emergency room use fell sharply during the pandemic, Witty said. “It looks pretty sustained down, and it doesn’t seem to be coming back up,” he said. “A lot of people don’t expect that utilization to come back.”
- Close monitors: The reduction in the emergency room use could be the result of patients making more use of urgent care centers, he said. “But I would say it’s premature to call it,” Witty said. UnitedHealth is watching closely to see whether the pandemic has caused a long-lasting shift in patient flows, he said.
- Revenues: UnitedHealth was the first life or health insurer to post second-quarter earnings. UnitedHealth reported $4.3 billion in net income for the quarter on $71 billion in revenue, compared with $6.6 billion in net income on $62 billion in revenue for the second quarter of 2020.