UnitedHealth Group Incorporated

And welcome to the United Health Group first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. A question and answer session will follow United Health Group's prepared remarks. And as a reminder, this call is being recorded. Here are some important introductory information. This call contains forward-looking statements under U.S. federal security laws. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results to differ materially from the 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 periodic filings. This all will also reference non-GAAP amounts. A recorrelation of the non-GAAP to the 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 issued this morning in our form 8K dated April 14, 2022, which will be assessed assessed from the investor relations page of the company's website. I will now turn the conference over to Chief Executive Officer of the UnitedHealth Group, Andrew Whitty. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, and thank you all for joining us today. Coming into this quarter, we set clear objectives for the year to drive strong execution of our long-term strategy and deliver high-quality diversified growth. pursue excellence in every consumer experience and at every touchpoint, and apply technology to help all stakeholders to improve access, affordability, outcomes, and experiences. As our results show, we're delivering on these objectives. I would like to start this morning's call by thanking my colleagues, the 350,000 people of Optum and UnitedHealthcare, Their dedicated work gives us the confidence today to increase our 2022 adjusted earnings per share outlook to a range of $21.20 to $21.70 per share. At our November investor conference, we described five key areas to drive our long-term 13% to 16% earnings per share growth rate. In the first area, value-based care delivery, Optum Health continued its robust momentum into the first quarter, characterized by its integrated approach and high clinical quality. After a strong start to the year, we now expect to add 600,000 patients under value-based arrangements during 2022, compared to our initial estimate of 500,000. Our approach focuses on providing quality care in the setting that makes most sense for the patients we serve. Our pending combination with LHC Group will reinforce our ability to deliver care and support in the home, as well as in other ambulatory locations. Within the second growth area, health benefits, we're rapidly advancing the quality, innovation, and consumer appeal of our plan offerings and bringing value-based care to scale. In Medicare Advantage, our strategic balance of benefit stability, and enhancements once again help to deliver strong growth. We remain well on track to serve an additional 800,000 people in 2022, consistent with the expectations we set last November. In the commercial benefits market, our innovative offerings such as physician-led and virtual first plans have grown to serve 350,000 more people over the past year. This underscores the consumer appeal for these high quality primary care based coverage options. Nearly 90% of newly enrolled people in our individual exchange offerings selected plans with significant virtual components in the most recent open enrollment period, and nearly 30% selected a virtual first offering. You'll see us expand such offerings as we look forward to 2023. In our third growth area, health technology, we continue to execute on the major new health system partnerships initiated last year, including a broad relationship with SSM Health and its 11,000 providers caring for people throughout the Midwest. We are helping our health system partners alleviate administrative burdens and create an operational capacity for these organizations to focus on delivering high-quality patient care and experiences. These partnerships move far beyond traditional revenue cycle management, with both clinical and technology features becoming important. Fourth, our developing efforts in health financial services, streamlining and simplifying payments for providers, payers, and consumers while reducing friction and increasing speed and convenience. Consider our new integrated consumer card, which we introduced in January. Many people typically have separate cards for clinical care, pharmacy benefits, food assistance programs, fitness, rewards programs, and more. We've combined these benefits into a single card, vastly simplifying the experience for consumers and providers, and we plan to do even more in the future. And finally, pharmacy services. The high cost of specialty drugs is one of the most pressing issues for our health plan partners. Drawing upon all of Optum's advanced analytical capabilities, we're collaborating with health plans to provide clinicians access to real-time medical and pharmacy analytics, which are coordinated with a patient-specific benefit plan design, enabling clinicians to determine the most effective and appropriate therapies at the point of care. Our initial results are highly positive, helping to lower specialty costs by over 15%. Overall, OptimRx's performance in the quarter, healthy retention rates, and strong sales pipeline provide a great foundation for growth. These efforts, from expanding in-home and broad value-based care offerings, to enhancements to Medicare Advantage, to simplifying how to finance care, are designed to create greater value for consumers, and more broadly, have a profound impact on the lives of families and individuals in communities with all levels of need across America, which is a powerful motivation for all of us at this company each and every day. Dirk McMahon, our President and Chief Operating Officer, will now share more about these efforts.

Dirk. Thank you, Andrew. There is no more important aspect of the consumer experience in healthcare than convenient access to quality care. not theoretical access, but care when and where people need it. Testing, for instance, is an area where we see significant opportunity to improve the consumer experience. It can be a burden for people to test for conditions such as colorectal cancer. As a result, too often, people just won't deal with the hassle, early-stage condition, and as a result, early-stage conditions go undiagnosed, and people don't get the care they need until things get really serious, which is bad for their health and results in unnecessarily higher intensity treatments and costs in the future. Like many of you, we have observed more willingness by patients for trial and adoption of in-home testing for many types of common conditions. However, it can be challenging for people to first find tests and then make sure the results get back into a doctor's workflow. Patients need to call providers for a prescription go to disparate locations to pick up the test, and then somehow get the piece of paper with a test result into an already busy clinic operation. At UnitedHealthcare, we've introduced an integrated solution that addresses all of the tasks that need to occur sequentially for a test result to get into a clinic system. This digitally enabled solution is resulting in nearly 10% increase in people obtaining necessary screening versus a multi-step process. We are expanding this vital capability to more people and making additional types of tests available as well. As many of you know, the first quarter tends to be the most impactful in setting us up for operational success for the remainder of the year. The ease of that initial experience for people has a lasting impact on consumer and customer perceptions and buying decisions, not just for the next three months, but often for years to come. So we thought it would be timely and helpful to provide a bit of a performance report card for the quarter. The short version, this is where we owe a great thank you to the people of Optum and UnitedHealthcare. Perhaps nowhere was this more apparent than in the onboarding of the many new people served under value-based arrangements within Optum Health. Investing in the preparation of systems and training in physicians and staff was critical in laying the groundwork to provide high-quality care for these new patients and expanding into new geographies. For example, in Ohio and New York, we are observing early improvements in post-acute trends, such as skilled nursing facility admits declining 25% in just the first quarter of operation. It's a testament to the deep integration of our post-acute capabilities for transitioning patients to the most appropriate setting for their needs, as well as a patient-centric orientation of our local care delivery organizations and their vigilance on care continuity. At UnitedHealthcare, our digital investments are continuing to serve our care providers and helping advance our efforts to move to a paperless experience. In the first quarter, visits to our digital portal continued to increase while provider support calls declined about 12 percent from historical averages. Importantly, We have driven a 38% increase in providers using digital documents instead of paper in just this first quarter compared to last year. We expect the efforts we have taken in this quarter will save 80 tons of paper over the next five years. Before handing off to John, let me briefly, let me turn briefly to our pending combination with Change Healthcare. It should be clear we are deeply committed to helping achieve a simpler, more intelligent, and adaptive health system for patients, payers, and providers. The combination of Optum and Change Healthcare will connect and simplify core clinical, administrative, and payment processes healthcare providers and payers depend on to serve patients. Increasing efficiency and reducing friction will benefit the entire health system, resulting in lower costs and a better experience for all stakeholders. Our extended agreement with Change Healthcare reflects our firm belief in the potential benefits of this combination to improve healthcare and in our ability to successfully overcome the challenge to this merger. With that, now I'll turn it over to Chief Financial Officer John Rex.