UnitedHealthcare, Orlando Health reach last-minute agreement on new contract
After months of negotiations, Orlando Health and UnitedHealthcare reached a new multiyear contract agreement, allowing 74,000 Central Floridians to keep receiving care in-network at Orlando Health without disruption.
The old contract expired Monday at midnight.
“Our top priority throughout the negotiation was to ensure the people and families we serve throughout central Florida have continued access to quality, affordable care, and this new agreement helps accomplish that goal. We appreciate Orlando Health’s collaboration in achieving this outcome,” said United spokesperson Cole Manbeck in an emailed statement.
The agreement comes after months of stop-and-go negotiations, finger-pointing and repeated warnings to patients that Orlando Health may go out of network, and they may have to find new doctors. On Monday, with hours to go until the contract dissolved, Central Florida residents told the Orlando Sentinel they were fed up with the uncertainty.
“Orlando Health is pleased to report that we have reached an agreement with United HealthCare. Throughout this process, we remained focused on trying to ensure that patients who choose Orlando Health for their medical needs continued to have access to comprehensive, convenient, high-quality healthcare services whether they were inpatient or outpatient. We were also committed to reaching an agreement that was fair to all patients, whether they are on a commercial or individual plan, Medicare or Medicaid,” said Michele Napier, senior vice president and chief revenue officer of Orlando Health, in an emailed statement sent at 4 a.m. Tuesday morning.
Neither organization responded to requests for additional details about the contract, such as its length.
Orlando Health spokespeople have previously declined to share details about the health system’s proposal and have said that its contract terms with insurers are proprietary information.
Ccatherman@orlandosentinel.com; @CECatherman Twitter
