Clinicians told STAT that UnitedHealth pressured them to apply lucrative diagnosis codes to patients
One of the doctors, Susan Baumgaertel, said she was recently contacted to discuss UnitedHealth by an attorney from the DOJ's antitrust division who had read STAT's articles. She said she plans to meet virtually with four government attorneys this week. Baumgaertel, an internal medicine physician, spent 25 years working for The Polyclinic, a large multispeciality group in Seattle that Optum took over in 2018.
Baumgaertel told STAT that UnitedHealth pressured her and her colleagues to apply codes to Medicare Advantage patients for conditions they didn't think were appropriate. She quit in 2021.
"We were not truly caring for patients anymore," she said. "We were just micromanaging their care to bring in money
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One of the doctors, Susan Baumgaertel, said she was recently contacted to discuss UnitedHealth by an attorney from the DOJ's antitrust division who had read STAT's articles. She said she plans to meet virtually with four government attorneys this week. Baumgaertel, an internal medicine physician, spent 25 years working for The Polyclinic, a large multispeciality group in Seattle that Optum took over in 2018.
Baumgaertel told STAT that UnitedHealth pressured her and her colleagues to apply codes to Medicare Advantage patients for conditions they didn't think were appropriate. She quit in 2021.
"We were not truly caring for patients anymore," she said. "We were just micromanaging their care to bring in money
DOJ seeks interviews with former UnitedHealth Group doctors
UnitedHealth is the country’s largest health insurer and has 90,000 doctors under its control, more than any other company.
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