UnitedHealth Group Announces Gold Card Program for Qualified Practices
What could be a first-of-its-kind move to facilitate healthcare services and break down some of the administrative burdens, UnitedHealth Group announced its launch of the Gold Card program, effective August 1. The new initiative allows qualified medical practices to bypass the sometimes cumbersome prior authorization process for a variety of medical, behavioral, and mental health services.
The Gold Card program is a dramatic departure from how providers traditionally interact with insurance protocols, but one said to bring more efficiency and better delivery of care to the patient. Practices that successfully register for the gold card program will no longer have to worry about submitting prior authorization requests, a step that was historically known to be both time-consuming and bureaucratically challenging. It will save a lot of administrative workload for healthcare providers, who then get to focus much more on the care of patients.
Effective September 1, UnitedHealth Group will post a comprehensive list of services eligible under the Gold Card program. To this, UHG will release specific instructions as to how provider groups may assess their eligibility for Gold Card status. That is aimed at making practices informed about the standards and procedures for qualifying for gold card status, which helps them in necessary preparation and adjustment.
The program is scheduled to officially start this October 1, and qualified practices can look forward to a new beginning in health management. UHG strives to give birth to a more streamlined, healthcare-oriented system by easing and fast-tracking prior authorization initiatives, which shall allow providers to effectively deliver care on time, rather than getting held up by administrative red tape. Further updates will be published as UnitedHealth Group further rolls out this game-changing initiative.
