UnitedHealth Sees Sunny 1Q, Says Deferred Care Impact Is MIA

  • Apr 15, 2022

    UnitedHealth Group on April 14 reported first-quarter 2022 financial results that beat Wall Street expectations and led the health care behemoth to raise its full-year earnings guidance. The firm also offered insights into health care utilization trends that could serve as good news for the entire industry, as executives said they still have not seen evidence of members’ health conditions deteriorating because of care deferred during the pandemic.

    Overall, care utilization in the quarter was roughly at baseline levels, Chief Financial Officer John Rex said during UnitedHealth’s conference call to discuss quarterly results. With the Omicron variant-driven surge early in the year, the company recorded about 40,000 COVID-19-related hospitalizations in January — “the highest of any month since the onset of the pandemic,” Rex said. But by March, hospitalizations declined to around 2,000 as the surge receded.

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  • Leslie Small

    Leslie has been working in journalism since 2009 and reporting on the health care industry since 2014. She has covered the many ups and downs of the Affordable Care Act exchanges, the failed health insurer mega-mergers, and hundreds of other storylines spanning subjects such as Medicaid managed care, Medicare Advantage, employer-sponsored insurance, and prescription drug coverage. As the managing editor of Health Plan Weekly and Radar on Drug Benefits, she writes and edits for both publications while overseeing a small team of reporters who also focus on the managed care sector. Before joining AIS Health, she was a senior editor for the e-newsletter Fierce Health Payer, and she started her career as a copy editor at multiple local newspapers. She graduated with a dual degree in journalism and political science from Penn State University.

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