United Health Care Provider Directory
From LoveToKnow Insurance
The United Health Care provider directory is an important resource for people who use United Health Care for their medical insurance. It lets them find doctors and other medical professionals who accept the insurance quickly and easily.
There are two ways to get a United Health Care Provider Directory. A policyholder can call United at 800-585-6586 and ask to receive one in the mail. Additionally, the United online directory is easily accessible.
Navigating the United Health Care Provider Directory
The directory is divided into four sections:
- The General Directory
- The Medicare Physician Directory
- The Medicaid Physician Directory
- The Health Plan’s Physician Directory
General Directory
This directory lets a person search for health providers in the network using one of three search options:
- Physician Search – The first screen of this search allows a person to find a doctor by name, by a specific condition the doctor treats, or to search for only UnitedHealth Premium Physicians or NCQA recognized physicians. Additional optional search criteria include location, gender and language spoken. The second screen allows the searcher to narrow the results by specialty. The third screen provides each doctor’s address and phone and additional details on the practice.
- Health Care Facility Search – This option allows the searcher to find a facility that provides specific medical treatment. He or she can look for a specialty surgical hospital, a laboratory or an urgent care facility. United Health Care members can receive quality of care and cost estimates along with their search results.
- Mental Health Search – This piece of the directory links out to Live and Work Well, United Health Care’s separate online database of behavioral health specialists. The user can search by clinician name, group name, clinician type, gender, ethnicity, area of expertise, language spoken, and accessibility.
Medicare Physician Directory
This directory is divided into two sections: SecureHorizons and Evercare. These are two different Medicare programs that United Health Care offers to seniors and certain disabled persons with assistance from the federal government. The user can search for participating doctors and pharmacies and find covered prescription drugs by entering basic information. These directories also have information to help policyholders better understand their Medicare coverage.
Medicaid Physician Directory
This directory helps people find doctors who accept AmeriChoice, United Health Care’s Medicaid program designed to help low-income Americans afford health insurance. This program is also subsidized by the federal government. Members can find doctors and peruse the preferred prescription drug list.
Health Plan Directory
This directory, for United Health Care policyholders only, lets people search specifically for doctors in their health plan without having to enter less specific criteria first. It is the easiest way for people on this insurance to find a list of doctors they can use quickly. It also allows them to see personalized information on their claims and benefits. A username and password is required to access this directory.
UnitedHealth Premium Program
United designates certain physicians as Premium if it finds them to be both quality and cost efficient providers of care. United calls these doctors "Two-Star Physicians" since they have one star for quality and one star for cost-efficient care. There is an entire website devoted to this program that is separate from the United Health Care provider directory.
It is a good idea for patients to check the directory before seeing any type of physician or getting lab work done. This is true whether they have an HMO or a PPO plan. Oftentimes the insurance will charge the patient more for out of network services or not cover those services as all. If the directory is not convenient, ask a receptionist in the office to look up the insurances that the doctor accepts before being seen.
Learn More
This page has been accessed 176 times. This page was last modified 00:14, 19 September 2009.
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