April 24 (Reuters) – UnitedHealth and CVS Health said on Friday they have standardized data and submission requirements for \u200cmore than half of their prior authorizations, as part \u200cof an industry effort to reduce delays and paperwork for patients and doctors.<\/p>\n
U.S. \u200bhealth insurers, which have come under scrutiny to simplify their requirements for prior approval on medicines and medical services, have been working to deliver on commitments made last year to cut red tape \u200cand improve transparency.<\/p>\n
\u2022 UnitedHealthcare, \u2060UnitedHealth’s insurance unit, said more than 70% of prior authorization requests will be part of this \u2060standardized process by the end of the year.<\/p>\n
\u2022 The process will apply across its commercial plans, government-backed Medicare Advantage and Medicaid businesses, \u200bthe insurer \u200bsaid.<\/p>\n
\u2022 CVS Health said its \u200bAetna insurance unit has \u200cstandardized 88% of its prior authorization volume.<\/p>\n
\u2022 The standardized approach will be used for medical services that are commonly subject to prior authorization, such as orthopedic surgeries and imaging services, including CT scans and MRIs, industry group AHIP said.<\/p>\n
\u2022 UnitedHealthcare said it \u200caims to improve predictability, reduce rework \u200band decrease the number of requests for \u200badditional information by standardizing \u200bthe information health plans require to support prior \u200cauthorizations.<\/p>\n
\u2022 It also plans to \u200bexpand the program \u200bto additional medical services and continue cutting the number of procedures that require prior approval.<\/p>\n
\u2022 UnitedHealthcare said the changes \u200bwill not affect \u200ccoverage rules or the medical reasons used to approve or \u200bdeny care.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Sahil Pandey and Mariam Sunny in \u200bBengaluru; Editing by Shreya Biswas)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"April 24 (Reuters) – UnitedHealth and CVS Health said on Friday they have standardized data and submission requirements…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":604636,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[35781,97,252,156103,253,262893,45370,9448,33270,262891,262892,58971],"class_list":{"0":"post-604635","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health-care","8":"tag-cvs-health","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-health-care","11":"tag-health-insurers","12":"tag-healthcare","13":"tag-industry-effort","14":"tag-medical-services","15":"tag-medicare-advantage","16":"tag-prior-authorization","17":"tag-prior-authorizations","18":"tag-standardized-approach","19":"tag-unitedhealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=604635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604635\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/604636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=604635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=604635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=604635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}