UnitedHealthcare exiting managed care in Nevada

Grace Leong

Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2001 | 11:16 a.m.

UnitedHealthcare said its deal Monday to move 15,000 Nevada customers to a competitor signals its intention to leave the Nevada managed care industry and instead become a health insurer serving the employees of big businesses.

NevadaCare will acquire about 15,000 Nevada HMO and Medicaid health plan members from UnitedHealthcare, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group Inc. of Minneapolis.

NevadaCare and UnitedHealthcare officials declined to disclose the financial details of the transaction.

Pending regulatory approval, NevadaCare's statewide membership will be about 76,000 after the transaction, positioning it as the state's second largest HMO after Sierra Health Services and ahead of PacifiCare. NevadaCare expects the transfer to be complete by May 1.

"After the deal, UnitedHealthcare will have 50,000 (non-HMO) members in Nevada whose health plans will be administered by Uniprise, a UnitedHealth Group subsidiary," said Roger Cruzen, a UnitedHealthcare spokesman. "We have another 11,000 non-HMO members in Nevada, whose health insurance is being provided by UnitedHealthcare.

"The 15,000 HMO members who will be transferred to NevadaCare, comprise 9,000 HMO and 6,000 Medicaid members," said Michael Strand, another Unitedhealthcare spokesman.

He said the company will no longer offer HMO (health maintenance organization) products but will focus on serving large companies -- including those based outside of Nevada but with Nevada employees. For example, Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines has Nevada workers covered by UnitedHealthcare.

"In the past, if a patient wanted to see a specialist, he had to get a reference from physicians and the physicians needed to get authorization from insurance providers," Strand said. "But we are moving away from that. We now have a plan where physicians are not required to get authorization before prescribing treatment to the patients."

The deal will cause Nevadacare to add a few jobs, giving it more than 100 workers in Nevada. Strand said UnitedHealthcare currently has five workers in Nevada and will continue to have a presence here. "There are no changes for now, and we expect the majority of the five workers will be retained."

"It will be a seamless transition because UnitedHealthcare patients still be able to go to same providers as they have in the past. Most providers in their network are in ours," said Curtiss Barker, senior vice president and chief administrative officer of Phoenix-based I/MX, the parent company of NevadaCare.