NEW YORK (BLOOMBERG) -- UnitedHealth Group Inc. and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center resolved a contract dispute that threatened to interrupt treatment for thousands of cancer patients in the New York City area.
The largest US health insurer reached a deal Tuesday morning with one of the nation’s highest profile cancer centers. The pact was reached just after a July 1 deadline, meaning Sloan Kettering was briefly no longer in the insurer’s network for about 19,000 patients currently in treatment there.
UnitedHealth said the new agreement with Memorial Sloan Kettering is for several years, without specifying how many.
Health insurers and hospital systems frequently deadlock in negotiations until the brink of when a contract runs out, only to make a deal at the last minute.
As talks progressed, both sides had set up websites pointing fingers at the other party. UnitedHealth said Sloan Kettering was seeking an average price increase of about 30% by 2027, a concession it claimed would increase health-care costs by $400 million. The insurer says the cancer center is already paid more than competing hospitals in the region.
Sloan Kettering had said the insurer’s payment rates haven’t kept pace with the increase in its expenses, and said it has better patient outcomes than other New York hospitals at lower costs.