Consequences of the Optum/Corvallis Clinic March 2024 Merger
House Bill 2362 was passed through the Oregon legislature and signed into law by Governor Kate Brown in 2021. This new law created the Health Care Market Oversight Program (HCMO), which oversees all health care mergers, acquisitions, and consolidation transactions in Oregon. HCMO evaluated a proposed transaction between the Corvallis Clinic and Optum Oregon.
The Corvallis Clinic has provided healthcare services in the mid-Willamette Valley for 75 years. It currently has approximately 100 medical providers in over 25 medical specialties and 500 support staff in 11 locations.
Optum Oregon is a subsidiary of United Healthcare, the largest health insurance company in the United States. On March 8, 2024, Optum Oregon invoked the Emergency Exemption Clause of HCMO, which allowed Optum to acquire controlling equity in and take over management functions of Corvallis Clinic.
In their exemption filing, Optum Oregon claimed that this merger was the only way to prevent an immediate interruption of patient care and, therefore, should proceed without oversight from the HCMO program.
Were there other options that could have been considered?
The Corvallis Clinic could have allowed the community to consider alternatives like locally operated health district.
Samaritan Health could have taken on the Corvallis Clinic patients.
Optum Oregon repeatedly denied requests for the public to view the financials of the Corvallis Clinic.
Optum Oregon knows that its corporate practice of medicine is most successful when the public is uninformed and fearful. We should not let fear dictate whether our health care is placed in the hands of monopolistic corporations that are profit-driven instead of people-focused.
The goal of reducing patient costs and using equitable medical practices cannot proceed while HCMO continues to approve transactions that remove local control from decision-making.
The people who know what you need most are your neighbors and fellow community members, not UnitedHealthcare and Optum Oregon.
Understanding UnitedHealthcare
UnitedHealthcare is one of the most profitable and powerful healthcare and health insurance companies in the world.
When the Eugene OMG medical group merged with Optum Oregon, the clinic was closed in the afternoons for months to retrain clinicians on new systems.
This decision denied patients the care they needed.
A March 27th , 2024 article* in the Oregonian detailed how providers are leaving OMG.
The group’s patients received a letter stating they would need to seek medical care elsewhere, citing a lack of providers on staff.
There are many questions about United Healthcare’s ability to maintain patient privacy.
A recent data breach of United Healthcare subsidiary Change Healthcare allowed hackers to view patients’ personal medical information and interrupted medical claims processing for the entire healthcare industry**.
It is reported that Change processes 15 billion healthcare transactions per year. This has impacted all medical providers, hitting small clinics the hardest.
Future decisions about the Corvallis Clinic or any other regional provider system need to consider the multi-decade effect of corporate monopolization of medicine and keep power in the hands of Oregon communities.