'Out of Control': Insurance Giant UnitedHealth Calls in Middle of Cancer Surgery to Question Necessity. Common Dreams, Jan. 9, 2025.

Dr. Elisabeth Potter shared "another horror story from a doctor dealing with United Healthcare's terrible authorization process."

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A month after the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson prompted many Americans to share personal horror stories of the company's coverage denials and other practices, a doctor in Austin, Texas on Wednesday shared her own experience that she said exemplified how the for-profit health system "just keeps getting worse."

In a video posted to TikTok, Dr. Elisabeth Potter said she recently received an unprecedented phone call from UnitedHealthcare about a patient -- one who was already under anesthesia and having surgery.

Potter, a plastic surgeon who specializes in reconstructive surgery for breast cancer patients who have had mastectomies, said she was performing a bilateral deep inferior epigastric perforator [DIEP} surgery when UnitedHealthcare called her in the operating room.

The call was urgent, she was told, and needed to be returned right away.

"So I scrubbed out of my case and I called UnitedHealthcare, and the gentleman said he needed some information about her," said Potter. "Wanted to know her diagnosis and whether her inpatient stay should be justified." Potter found that the person calling wasn't aware that the patient whose care he was questioning had breast cancer and was in the operating room -- that information was known by "a different department" at UnitedHealthcare...

https://www.commondreams.org/news/united-healthcare-surgery-coverage