UnitedHealth Group Incorporated

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the United Health Group first quarter 2021 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star 1 on your telephone. As a reminder, today's program is being recorded. And now I'd like to introduce your host for today's program, Andrew Witte. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning and thank you for joining us to discuss our first quarter results and positive outlook as we continue to execute on United Health Group's long-standing mission and strategies. The exceptional dedication of the people of Optum and United Healthcare again defined this period. They've adapted swiftly and creatively to demanding and rapidly changing circumstances, implemented new ideas, and importantly remained focused on serving people exceptionally well. As a result, adjusted earnings per share were $5.31, reflecting strong execution at both United Healthcare and Optum. In light of our strong start to the year, balanced with continued respect for the potential pandemic-related effects we have previously described, we are increasing our full-year adjusted earnings outlook to a range of $18.10 to $18.60 per share. I'll touch briefly on two highlights among many in the quarter that illustrate the increased momentum our colleagues at UnitedHealth Group are driving. People served with our employer and individual offerings grew nearly 100,000 in the quarter, even within the context of a challenged U.S. employment environment. And this underscores the growing consumer orientation, affordability, and breadth of our products. OptumInsight revenues increased 14% and operating income increased 45% compared to the year-ago period, as more normal activity levels among healthcare system customers returned, leading to expansion in how we help them advance clinical and operational excellence. Significant innovation and automation in the OptumInsight businesses drove strong productivity gains. We have the right capabilities, assets, and strategies in place and we remain restless to innovate, evolve, and further integrate our offerings to serve more people more effectively, both directly and with our many external partners throughout the healthcare environment. To achieve this, we've been sharpening our focus in three key areas. delivering even greater value to those we serve throughout the healthcare system by better harnessing the collaborative capabilities of Optum and United Healthcare. We believe we can develop new products and services which support people more effectively by bringing to bear greater application and adoption of the combined offerings of these two distinct and complementary organizations. OptumCare's work supporting Medicare Advantage patients illustrates this well, and I'll speak more to this shortly. The second area of focus, increasing the application of our technology and related resources to improve care for people and the operation of health systems. There are benefits for everyone in helping to make the healthcare system work more like an actual system. Improving the natural flow, accessibility, and use of information is essential to that goal, all within a secure and protected framework. We can help care providers and payers better serve patients by more effectively simplifying key administrative processes and by providing timely access to relevant information. The third focus is making healthcare work better for consumers. We're ambitious to meet the rising expectations of healthcare consumers. And we will continue to improve our offerings, including in such critical zones as greatly simplified intuitive and satisfying consumer digital experiences and advanced healthcare banking and payment services that enable people to find, price, and pay for care digitally. You'll hear more from us about these approaches in the months ahead, but today I'd like to focus on the first. unlocking greater value for customers at the intersection of Optum and UnitedHealthcare, including through our ability to develop new, useful service offerings. One of the most effective ways of doing so is through stronger alignment of the high-quality clinical services of OptumCare to address the needs of patients we serve for our nearly 90 health plan customers. A key foundation is increasing the clinical outcome accountability of our OptumCare practices. Of the 4 million patients who OptumCare serves in some form of accountable arrangement today, 2 million are being served under fully capitated arrangements. And this demonstrates a strong growth and progress. But OptumCare serves 20 million patients in total, which is one reason why we view the potential of OptumCare as only beginning to be harnessed. These accountable arrangements drive measurably better patient outcomes and experiences, all at lower cost. For example, seniors served by OptumCare physicians under such arrangements spend on average one-third fewer days in the hospital and have 40% fewer days in skilled nursing facilities than seniors in traditional Medicare. We expect the growth in the number of OptumCare patients served under accountable arrangements to accelerate. A further example of using our combined expertise to advance more beneficial service offerings is the recent opening of a first of its kind Optum integrated care facility in Riverside County, California. While we have long offered and continue to actively develop our senior focus clinics, this new clinic and community center offers a comprehensive range of primary care led services, including a pharmacy, all under a single roof, and importantly, It is especially orientated around supporting Medicaid, Medicare, commercial, and individual members of all ages. This comprehensive health center provides improved care access with modern onsite services, including annual wellness visits, chronic disease management support, coordinated care with trusted specialists, and laboratory, imaging, and pharmacy services. The adjacent community center includes a full-service gym and meeting rooms for health education. We see Optum and our payer partners as uniquely positioned to be able to offer these types of impactful venues and look forward to learning from the community and expanding these services. To sum up, we continue to organize and apply the unique capabilities of this organization in ways that enable us to execute on the goals we established for 2021. and beyond and to continue to deliver on our 13 to 16 percent long-term earnings growth objective now i'll turn it over to president and chief operating officer dirk mcmahon to give more color on initiatives to drive greater performance across the organization thanks andrew as andrew noted we continue to drive growth by supporting more affordable simpler quality care across optum and united healthcare

These are themes you've heard us cover before, and we continue to see the benefits of this approach for people for the people we serve. Let me turn those themes into some specific examples across Optum and UnitedHealthcare that illustrate how our approach is working. First is how we've been simplifying the consumer experience over the past year. We've driven greater engagement with seniors by increasing adoption of digital tools. Monthly active users of our digital offerings have risen double digit, with similar increases in online transactions. This has led to greater adoption of our digital therapeutic offerings. In the first quarter, high-risk chronic disease patients in our home monitoring program logged over 1.5 million biometric measurements, such as glucose levels, enabling 99% medication compliance and an NPS of 84%. We've also made it easier for people to get and maintain behavioral health support by expanding traditional and virtual provider network and combine them with modern digital therapeutic services. Behavioral health needs have increased significantly during the pandemic. And as a result, we have seen substantial adoption in our digital behavioral platform that provide on-demand emotional support, logging a rise of over 100% in utilization. always accompanying our work to simplify health care, is Optum and UnitedHealthcare's sharp focus on delivering high-quality care. We've talked to you before about the advances we are making to integrate patient-specific health data and plan information directly into the physician's workflow. Clinicians can see gaps in care and act to close them during the patient's visit, in addition to other steps that facilitate more efficient care and better outcomes. We now support over 8 million of these insight-enabled digital interactions each month with rapidly expanding physician adoption. Delivering high-quality care has been central in our response to the COVID pandemic. Our most recent effort to help members access vaccines is a prime example. We launched a vaccine locator tool, helping people find and sign up for a vaccination. And we've made millions of outbound contacts to engage members and help them get the information they need. Lastly, making care more affordable remains central for the people we serve and the health system overall, and is essential for increasing access. For instance, through our medication sourcing program, high-cost providers now source drugs at a network specialty pharmacy, including OptumRx, or charge market rates only for the drug. Early work on this has generated substantial savings for our customers. Our work to make healthcare simpler, higher quality, and more affordable drives strong growth for our business. At the end of January, for example, UnitedHealthcare was awarded an Oklahoma SoonerCare Medicaid contract to serve nearly 200,000 people. Oklahoma previously operated under a fee-for-service program. The award affirms the value we bring to state partners and consumers and reflects our commitment to expand access to care for all Americans. We look forward to working with our new partners in Oklahoma and sharing with you on future calls new examples as our work on simplicity, quality, and affordability continues to create improvements and new growth opportunities. With that, now I'll turn it over to Chief Financial Officer John Rex.