Mastodawn

The Guardian: Revealed: UnitedHealth secretly paid nursing homes to reduce hospital transfers

"...The company also monitored nursing homes that had smaller numbers of patients with “do not resuscitate” – or DNR – and “do not intubate” orders in their files. Without such orders, patients are in line for certain life-saving treatments that might lead to costly hospital stays.

Two current and three former UnitedHealth nurse practitioners told the Guardian that UnitedHealth managers pressed nurse practitioners to persuade Medicare Advantage members to change their “code status” to DNR even when patients had clearly expressed a desire that all available treatments be used to keep them alive...."

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/21/unitedhealth-nursing-homes-payments-hospital-transfers

#insurance #greed

Revealed: UnitedHealth secretly paid nursing homes to reduce hospital transfers

A Guardian investigation finds insurer quietly paid facilities that helped it gain Medicare enrollees and reduce hospitalizations. Whistleblowers allege harm to residents

The Guardian

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Layla Low May 22

@ai6yr Saw this on Bluesky & came here to report that, although I haven’t got UH Insurance, my primary care doctor asked me to sign a DNR at my yearly office visit late last year.

I’m extremely careful about staying healthy, and quite active for someone in their 70s. I couldn’t figure out what was up with that until this. (1/2)

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Mathaetaes

@nesmb @ai6yr Did they ask you to sign a DNR, or did they just give you the Advanced Directive information sheet?

I received my first Advanced Directive information sheet from my doctor at like 30. Granted, it was when I was there for a cancer diagnosis, but the 5-year survival rate for what I had was like 98%. I didn't get the impression that they were encouraging me to sign a DNR - just that they were encouraging me to think NOW about what conditions I'd want to be kept alive under. It's an important thing to think about when you're healthy so your family doesn't wonder about it when you're sick. If you're in a coma and unlikely to wake up, do they keep you on life support? Do you want to continue if you'll be confined to a bed, eating from a feeding tube, and needing to ask for help to go to the bathroom for the rest of your life? Do you want to continue if you'll be in constant, severe pain? Do you want to live with missing limbs? Cognitive decline? Would you want to continue in a vegetative state?

Also, the answers may change over time. Now that I have kids, the conditions that I'm willing to tolerate are far more severe than in my 30s. I still think I get too many of these "have you considered an Advanced Directive" info sheets, but their value is worth their annoyance. Death is a hard topic, and most people won't think or talk about it without prodding, but it's an important conversation to have. A good health system will be encouraging people to have those conversations with their friends/family, without attempting to influence the conversation beyond providing medically sound information.

The issue with United Health is that they were pressuring nurses to influence those decisions, and to do so in a way that increased profits regardless of a patient's true feelings. That's truly vile, and should be criminal.