MINNEAPOLIS – (April 1, 2008) – UnitedHealthcare, a UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH) company, is joining physician, consumer, labor, employer and payer organizations to support the Patient Charter for Physician Performance Measurement, Reporting and Tiering Programs and its call for public reporting of information on physician performance. 

The Patient Charter, an initiative of the Consumer-Purchaser Disclosure Project, was developed to foster meaningful and accurate reporting of information on physician performance.  It establishes a market-based approach that balances standardization and innovation, ensuring consumers have access to consistent and credible information, and complements the Criteria for Physician Performance Measurement, Reporting and Tiering Programs, which has been adopted by many leading physician organizations.

The goal of the Disclosure Project is to develop programs that will help Americans select hospitals, physicians, and treatments based on nationally standardized measures for clinical quality, consumer experience, equity and efficiency.  More information on the Consumer-Purchaser Disclosure Project and its initiatives is available at http://healthcaredisclosure.org.

Peter Lee, executive director, National Health Policy for the Pacific Business Group on Health, said: “We applaud UnitedHealthcare for joining in support of the Patient Charter. UnitedHealthcare’s endorsement of the Charter – and its efforts to use national standards of measurements that both consumers and physicians can understand and trust – demonstrates both the validity of the Patient Charter approach and UnitedHealthcare’s responsiveness to the needs of patients and concerns of doctors.”

Sam Ho, M.D., executive vice president and chief medical officer of UnitedHealthcare, said: “At UnitedHealthcare, we believe consumers expect and deserve the best possible physician care.  One of the first steps toward helping consumers receive optimal care is to provide tools that help them choose the right doctor to meet their specific, individual health care needs.  To this end, we developed the UnitedHealth Premium physician designation program, which provides consumers with access to meaningful information to help them make informed, educated health care choices that in turn enable them to lead healthier lives.”

The UnitedHealth Premium physician designation program, which builds on UnitedHealthcare’s 10-plus years of assessing physician and hospital performance, analyzes physician practices against established clinical guidelines for quality care.  Available online at www.uhc.com, the UnitedHealth Premium physician designation program enables consumers to compare quality and cost-efficiency information for physicians and facilities within their communities.  The program covers 132 markets today, giving more than 12 million UnitedHealthcare members access to this information.

“With the Patient Charter, the movement to provide transparent, fair and consistent quality and cost information is gaining further momentum, and the entire health care marketplace is responding,” said Dr. Ho.  “Government, health plans, doctors and others must work together to bring transparency to the health care delivery system to help enhance quality and affordable health care.”

About UnitedHealthcare
UnitedHealthcare (www.unitedhealthcare.com) provides a full spectrum of consumer-oriented health benefit plans and services.  The company organizes access to quality, affordable health care services on behalf of more than 26 million individual consumers, contracting directly with more than 555,000 physicians and care professionals and 4,800 hospitals nationwide to offer them broad, convenient access to services nationwide.  UnitedHealthcare is one of the businesses of UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH), a diversified Fortune 50 health and well-being company.