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#StopUHC

Urgent: We need your help to fight UHC's advance notification policy

Join AGA’s campaign against UnitedHealthcare (UHC), who now requires advance notification for gastroenterology endoscopy services for all commercial plans, regardless of the outpatient location.

AGA’s top priority: Speeding up access to care for patients and reducing administrative burden on practices by reforming prior authorization.

After weeks of protest from AGA and the GI community, UnitedHealthcare shelved the prior authorization policy for GI endoscopy planned to go into effect June 1, but replaced it with a nebulous Advance Notification Program.

This program requires you to provide even more data on top of the current burdensome paperwork requirements. It is a temporary patch – patients will not be denied care immediately, but the downstream effects of the program could be as bad or worse for patient access.

UHC’s new prior authorization policy will impact EGDs, capsule endoscopies, diagnostic colonoscopies and surveillance colonoscopies. These services are critical for the early diagnosis of life-threatening diseases such as colorectal cancer and for monitoring patients’ disease progression.  

The policy could cause care delays for high-risk individuals, deter patients from undergoing medically recommended procedures, exacerbate existing sociodemographic disparities in care and outcomes, and add to the growing administrative burden on physicians. 

AGA is leading the fight to reverse this burdensome and dangerous policy. 

Time is limited before the policy goes into effect.

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Below are ways you can help pressure United to rescind its dangerous prior auth policy.

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Bottom line: Patients should have timely access to the care their health care providers deem medically necessary.

For more information

Contact the AGA Government Affairs team: agaadvocacy@gastro.org. Media: contact Rebecca Reid at rreid@schmidtpa.com or 410-212-3843.

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