In the letter, the senators have asked more information from the managed care giant on the incident.
In May, The Guardian reported through an investigation that the company secretly paid nursing homes that helped it win Medicare enrollees and cut hospital transfers for sick patients.
According to the Guardian, the payments were linked to a company program under which its own medical teams were operating from nursing homes, helping the facilities to cut expenses attributed to its enrollees.
“We are concerned that these bonus programs provide a heavy incentive to nursing homes to limit hospitalizations of all kinds, even where necessary, in order to meet a metric that can be poorly suited to measure patient health and safety. Nursing home residents and their families should not live in fear of a for-profit health care company withholding care when it is most critical.” the letter stated.
The senators have requested a reply from the company by September 8 regarding its policies on hospitalizations, guidelines for care planning for nursing home residents in its institutional special needs plans, marketing strategies associated with those plans, and the federal oversight concerning them.
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UnitedHealth to be investigated by senators on nursing home practices
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