UnitedHealth Group Incorporated

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to today's United Health Group's second quarter 2021 earnings conference call. A question and answer session will follow United Health Group's prepared remarks. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. Here's some important introductory information. This call contains forward-looking statements under U.S. federal securities laws. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from historical experience or present expectations. A description of some of the risks and uncertainties can be found in the reports that we file with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the cautionary statements included in our current and periodic filings. This call will also reference non-GAAP amounts. A reconciliation of the non-GAAP to GAAP amounts is available on the Financial and Earnings Reports section of the company's Investor Relations page at www.unitedhealthgroup.com. Information presented on this call is contained in the earnings release we've issued this morning and in our Form 8K dated July 15, 2021, which may be accessed from the investor relations page of the company's website. I will now turn the call over to the Chief Executive Officer of UnitedHealth Group, Andrew Witte. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us. As we discuss our enterprise today, I hope you sense its growing momentum as we advance on our path of improving the quality, cost, and experience of healthcare for everyone we serve. Both Optum and UnitedHealthcare grew and delivered on our longstanding strategy, and we've increased our outlook for the year to a range of $18.30 to $18.80 per share. We continue to prioritize three key themes that we believe will underpin the next era of growth for our enterprise. First, unlock the collaborative opportunities within and between Optum and UnitedHealthcare. Second, increasingly apply technology to improve patient care and experience and to help the system run better. And third, strengthen our consumer focus, capabilities, and value. During the quarter, we accelerated our efforts to develop and deploy new and innovative products, informed by the insights of both Optum and UnitedHealthcare. in areas such as oncology care delivery, rare disease drug management, Optum Virtual, Optum Financial Services, and many others. We're doubling down on efforts to both expand and link services where it creates value for consumers and patients to make their healthcare journey easier, simpler, and more intuitive. We constantly challenge ourselves to develop capabilities which lead to improved care, better value, and a simpler system. Our sales to clients and partners across all parts of the health system demonstrate the strong relevance of our innovation. And the strengthening of our sales pipeline is a key opportunity as we emerge from the COVID market pause. A good example of bringing our collective strengths together at scale is the Optum home and community care platform, through which we care for nearly 10 million people. This platform includes are well-known house call service, comprehensive post-acute care for smoother transitions to home, and integrated primary and behavioral care for Medicare Advantage patients who prefer to receive their care at home. Home and community platform services can reduce post-acute medical care costs by a quarter, unnecessary readmissions by up to a fifth, and hospital admissions by up to 25%. In Medicaid, We're addressing consumer needs by expanding our long-term collaboration with public housing authorities, working with government agencies and community-based organizations to identify and address specific healthcare issues for people who are hard to reach and support. In just the past six months, we've introduced new partnerships in over 20 communities to close gaps in care and address health equity challenges. Using data and analytic capabilities, were able to rapidly identify local health trends and gaps and then work with community partners to inform guidelines, training materials, processes, and create better tools to advance health. We believe this will result in better health for community members and help to optimize limited state resources. These and other targeted initiatives on the social determinants of health are essential elements and illustrative of our natural and long-standing ESG impact. Our recently published sustainability report captures the full range of efforts we've dedicated ourselves to in areas of crucial concern to our stakeholders, none more so than advancing health and health equity. This agenda is an essential part of our way of doing business. I'd like to thank our 330,000 colleagues from across the company for the passion and diligence they show every day in helping to deliver improvements in serving our members, clients, and patients. I have great confidence that we're emerging from the last 18 months of disruption with an unprecedented set of opportunities to help improve the health system for all of those we can serve. And now, I'll turn it over to President and Chief Operating Officer, Dirk McMahon, to provide more detail on initiatives to drive performance across the organization.

Thank you, Andrew. In an enterprise with our breadth of market engagement, we have many ways to assess how we're doing. I'd like to share some of those metrics with you, picking up on Andrew's commentary on our three key strategic themes. First, collaboration. UnitedHealthcare's value proposition is rooted in lower costs, better outcomes and a better experience. Optum supports this value proposition for UnitedHealthcare and other health plans with ambulatory services which patients and their doctors value in this quarter we met the ambulatory surgery needs of over 250 000 patients delivering exceptional care in convenient and affordable settings with revenue growth approaching 20 percent over the non-pandemic affected 2019 second quarter these centers are meeting higher acuity and more complex needs such as total joint replacement spine and cardiovascular procedures, which are performed at an increasing number of centers. Our ambulatory settings receive a consumer NPS of 92, and we deliver better and more consistent quality outcomes at about half the cost of traditional settings. OptumCare has over 1,600 clinics and is rapidly expanding virtual offerings to serve patients in settings where they feel the most comfortable, and importantly, with their own physician. Seniors served by OptumCare under our integrated care approach spend considerably more time with their primary care physicians than seniors in traditional Medicare, and as a result, spend one-third fewer days in a hospital. Second is our strategy to increase the application of technology to improve patient care and help the system run better. We recently announced a partnership with Bassett Healthcare, another strong example of how OptumInsight is helping health systems to expand and scale essential capabilities, including revenue cycle management and digital modernization, to improve health outcomes and patients' healthcare experiences. We expect to continue to add new partnerships like this. Also, at OptumInsight, we've been tackling the most resource-intensive operations through the deployment of advanced technology and other approaches. For example, We have transformed what were once largely manual chart review processes into highly automated operations. Third, we have been hard at work advancing our consumer capabilities. UnitedHealthcare has made significant advances in the management of complex conditions. We're focused on making sure that patients with the highest acute care needs are able to access the most appropriate site of care by assigning them advocates to help navigate the system Nearly 1 million of these members are matched with a personal navigator to help them manage and improve their health. OptumRx continues to improve access and affordability of home delivery for patients, leading to significant improvements in continuity of care and having already reduced the cost to process and dispense prescriptions by nearly 20% in just the past two years. Also, along consumer cost savings lines, For those who prefer an in-store retail experience, we now offer tools to find the lowest cost prescriptions near them regardless of their health benefits coverage status. These tools can save self-paying consumers up to 80% on their medications. Consumer preference is also having an impact in behavioral health. Already this year, the OptumHealth behavioral platform has delivered over 500,000 virtual visits. an option we initiated in just the last year. Many consumers and clinicians prefer these virtual encounters since they offer enhanced accessibility, flexibility, and simplicity. Care encounters delivered through our dedicated channel have a patient satisfaction of 98%. These are just a few of the many initiatives we are executing on as we apply technology, data, and analytics to make our strategic growth agenda come alive. We look forward to updating you on our progress over the quarters to come. With that, now I'll turn it over to Chief Financial Officer John Ricks.