UnitedHealthcare to Reduce Benefits Unit Workforce While Adding Other Positions

UnitedHealthcare is reportedly looking to reduce the number of employees in its benefits unit through buyouts or layoffs.

The company is offering some employees in the unit the option to accept buyouts by March 3 and will lay off employees if it doesn’t get the number of resignations it is seeking, CNBC reported Wednesday (Feb. 19), citing unnamed sources.

UnitedHealthcare, which is the insurance arm of UnitedHealth Group, told CNBC that it has offered buyouts but declined to say how many employees got the offer, according to the report.

“This voluntary option is part of our ongoing efforts to ensure our team is best positioned to meet the evolving needs of the people and customers we are honored to serve,” a UnitedHealth spokesperson said in the report. “We continue to grow our workforce with more than 3,200 positions currently available on UnitedHealth Group’s website.”

UnitedHealth Group executives said during a January earnings call that the company is in the midst of a digital transformation that aims to elevate the customer experience.

CEO Andrew Witty said during the call that technology may be a solution to problems like claims that get held up because they were sent to the wrong company or patients didn’t have the right benefits.

Chief Technology Officer Sandeep Dadlani said that the company’s call center received 10% fewer calls year over year.

“Our AI, digital automation and our modernization agenda has focused largely on removing administrative menial tasks in the system and improving the customer experience,” Dadlani said.

It was reported in January that the data breach associated with last year’s ransomware attack on UnitedHealth’s Change Healthcare business impacted around 190 million people, a figure that was almost double earlier estimates.

The attack caused months of outages throughout the American healthcare system, as Change is one of the biggest processors of health claims in the country.

In April, UnitedHealth Group said it was shutting down its telehealth business, Optum Virtual Care.

A UnitedHealth Group spokesperson told PYMNTS at the time that the company would support the affected team members with job placement resources and, wherever possible, deploy them in any open roles.