Certainly there’s a bit of speculation in the title here as when you stop and take a look at all the subsidiary actions going on with the company and imagefor the most part they are all bottom profit moves with much headed toward technology, are they too big to insure, or perform within the realms of what is expected of health insurers in the US.  The company makes money not only from consumers, but also from other insurance companies  through subsidiary transactions with data. 

From the website:

“Founded in 1997, EHR, The Physician Advisor Company™, is nationally recognized as the leading provider of real-time, point of care, expert Physician Medical Management Solutions that improve hospital revenue integrity and maintain the highest level of quality of care and regulatory compliance. EHR's expert physicians, the EHR Physician Advisors, provide hospitals and health systems with an outsourced operational, technological, and clinical resource to achieve the hospital’s goal of effectively managing clinical care while maintaining sound financial performance.”image

This is more business intelligence type of services that would be added to to the Ingenix Database management and consulting division.  This would be the fifth acquisition this years.  In addition, speaking of Ingenix they were also in the news this week pushing their EHR with adding services to be able to transfer patient data into their system

INGENIX IS ALL ABOUT THE ALGORITHMS AND TRANSACTIONS – HOW THEY MAKE MONEY AND WANT EVERYONE TO USE THEIR FORMULAS.  You can see from the collaboration below from their press release with SRS as they want to attract as many as possible over to their EHR called Care Tracker. 

Excerpt from Ingenix Press Release from July 27th:

“SRS can now provide physicians’ practices with a Web-based practice management (PM) and scheduling system from Ingenix that is fully integrated with the SRS hybrid electronic medical record (EMR). The product will be co-branded as the SRS CareTracker PM, powered by Ingenix, and will be serviced and supported by SRS. The integrated system will optimize productivity by combining clinical and business workflows into one comprehensive system that saves staff time and enhances efficiency. SRS’s OpenPath™ technology will enable easy “plug-and-play” installation. 

SRS will also offer a migration path to Ingenix’s Web-based CareTracker EHR (electronic health record) system. Ingenix guarantees CareTracker will deliver the capabilities necessary for physicians to demonstrate meaningful use of health IT under the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA). By providing an option to migrate seamlessly to an alternative system, SRS is giving physicians greater flexibility in their health IT decisions and alleviating concerns about future mandates to use an EHR that supports meaningful use”

The company is also busy bidding for business in the UK to setup rules and procedures for the GPs.image

United Health Group Outbid Humana and Bupa in the UK to Run Management Services for GPs

Another major last week with this purchase and see it’s all data base management, algorithms and business intelligence.

Ingenix (Subsidiary of UnitedHealthGroup) Buys Picis Hospital Software Analytics Company – Algorithms of Healthcare Continue To Grow

They have record profits once more and they even have bank to put it if they want and having this bank they have the potential of loaning struggling healthcare companies a loan and I’m sure they would not be slow to repossess if late on payments too.

UnitedHealth Group Owns a Bank With Deposits Surpassing a Billion – OptumHealth Bank FDIC Insured

There’s a lot more and just do a keyword search on this blog and you can dig it up as I have kept updating what is in the news.  In short we are imagelooking at a health insurance company that is really beginning to resemble Wall Street with business models here and the confidence of providing good care and honest analysis services is something I wonder about, as most doctors and some patients have filed their claims for close to 15 years of underpayments thanks to the Ingenix data base where rates were low balled and due to lack of keeping up with the levels of intelligence they operate with, it took a while to catch them at their dirty tricks. 

AMA Has Online Assistance and Forms For Filing Claims For UnitedHealthCare/Ingenix

Ingenix make a ton of money selling your medication data too, it’s those algorithms and now are paying out pay for performance money to pharmacists at Walgreens to sign you up in one of their programs-they’re everywhere.

UnitedHealthCare To Use Data Mining Algorithms On Claim Data To Look For Those At “Risk” of Developing Diabetes – Walgreens and the YMCA Benefit With Pay for Performance Dollars to Promote and Supply The Tools

They make money selling data bases to Clinical Trial companies of our names, etc. for solicitation.

i3 An Ingenix Company (United Health Care) Partners With Acurian For Business Intelligence With Clinical Trials Marketing for Investigatorsimage

I think even HHS got a little confused with some recent praise for their software, what’s up with this?  With subsidiary actions and mergers you don’t know who you are doing business with unless you research.  I would rather see a software company that is not known for rogue algorithms being commended, as again how do you trust after being burned a number of times?

"Reach for the Top" Program Combines Prototype from Ingenix (A Wholly Owned Subsidiary of United Healthcare) for Public/Private Community Health Data on HHS.Gov Site

We have another class action suit filed and people and companies suing right and left if you need proof and let’s not forget the company in China that has a line of communication with the FDA for the process of promoting more Chinese drugs and devices for the US and other global locations.

Outpatient Surgery Centers File Class Action Lawsuit Against UnitedHealth and Ingenix for Underpayments
UnitedHealth subsidiary (Ingenix Subsidiary I3) Acquires ChinaGate – Working to Sell Chinese Products Globally

Does the word “divest” still exist?  It’s just a question in my mind as without balance and all the money driven processes here we will end up with one company running everyone’s healthcare if limits are not exercised on how big and where they grow.  We are already seeing a lot of this with current assets and some are new and haven’t even gotten started yet.

I keep reflecting on a post I made 2 years ago that stated the 2 hot trends in healthcare were algorithms and whistle blowers as they are both producing top revenue and profits. 

For those of you outside the data base arena, you are seeing and are going to see more data bases connected and analyzed and these will be companies that nobody expected to work together before , but it is happening now.  Nobody buys companies for investments any more, they have to product profit and this is what you are seeing here, data working with data with algorithms to generate profit, its all about those algorithms that create transactional profits.  It will be interesting to see if this is allowed to go through on the purchase and if the companies come to terms.  I don’t understand why our leaders can’t recognize and see what is happening all around them as non participation continues to hinder.  BD

UnitedHealth Group Inc. is nearing an agreement to buy medical services firm Executive Health Resources Inc. for about $1.5 billion, according to three people with knowledge of the talks.

UnitedHealth would add the Newtown Square, Pa.-based company to its Ingenix database management and consulting unit, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks are private.

Executive Health Resources would be UnitedHealth's fifth acquisition in 2010 of a closely held company outside its insurance unit, which accounted for about 75 percent of its earnings last year, according to Bloomberg data.

UnitedHealth said to be near $1.5B deal | StarTribune.com

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