UnitedHealthcare has announced that it will contract with up to 250 new accountable care organizations (ACO) in 2015, adding to its existing total of 520 such programs.
The payer says it now covers more than 11 million beneficiaries with value-based care. UnitedHealthcare’s total payments to physicians and hospitals that are tied to value-based arrangements have nearly tripled in the last three years to $36 billion. Those payments are expected to increase 20 percent to $43 billion in 2015 and hit $65 billion by the end of 2018, officials said in an announcement.
