https://mailchi.mp/9e118141a707/the-weekly-gist-march-6-2020?e=d1e747d2d8

Health systems and private equity firms aren’t the only ones aggregating physician practices—many large insurers are rapidly acquiring or affiliating with physician groups, especially to support their Medicare Advantage (MA) strategies.

As the map below shows, most insurers are focusing this vertical integration in states like Florida, Texas, and California—places where they also have large populations of MA beneficiaries. Astonishingly, UnitedHealth Group—through its Optum division—is likely the largest employer of physicians in the US, employing or affiliating with 50,000 physicians—roughly 5,000 more than HCA Healthcare and nearly double the number of Kaiser Permanente. The number of Optum-controlled physicians has increased rapidly in recent years, the result of many large-scale deals, including the $4.3B acquisition of DaVita Medical Group.

When it comes to leveraging this growing physician network, United is setting its sights well beyond Medicare Advantage, as demonstrated by its recent introduction of Harmony, a commercial narrow network health plan in Southern California based almost exclusively on a network of Optum physicians.

Meanwhile, Humana’s physician strategy has focused more on affiliations with non-traditional groups serving MA patients, including Iora Health and Oak Street Health—though Humana also has two large primary care groups, Conviva and Partners in Primary Care, the latter of which just secured a $600M private equity investment to expand.

Notably absent from this map is Aetna, which has been pursuing a different strategy, focused around steering its MA population to its advanced practice provider-run HealthHUBs in CVS pharmacies.

This trend of insurer acquisition of physicians is obviously worrisome for health systems, as the health plans they negotiate with for payment are now directly competing with them at the front end of the delivery system.