The Social Security Board has inked an agreement with the United States-based UnitedHealthcare to establish an overseas network of medical providers for the territory’s National Health Insurance system, the SSB announced last week.
The agreement provides NHI users with access to some 595,000 physicians and other health care professionals; 80,000 dentists; and 4,965 hospitals around the world, according to the SSB.
UnitedHealthcare will presumably receive a fee each time one of those providers is used by the NHI system — as did the SSB’s former overseas network provider, the Florida-based JIPA Network — but those details weren’t disclosed by the SSB, and board officials did not respond to inquiries.
SSB Deputy Director Roy Barry, who oversees the board’s NHI division, did say in a press release that UnitedHealthcare has helped reduce the costs of overseas health care for the VI. Networks like JIPA and UnitedHealthcare lower costs by negotiating volume discounts with their network of providers.
“So far, the cost savings have been tremendous. We have seen as high as an 80 percent cost saving, which proves excellent not only for NHI, but also the patient,” Mr. Barry said. “The co-pay for patients is much less than if they had accessed care outside of the territory without NHI.”
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