UnitedHealthcare recently announced that the Optum Pay basic service would restore access to claim payment and reconciliation activities for an unlimited number of users beginning May 22, 2021. As previously reported, the California Medical Association (CMA) had received numerous complaints from physicians regarding the loss of payment remittance advice (PRA) access through the UnitedHealthcare electronic payment platform, Optum Pay. CMA quickly jumped into action and coordinated with the American Medical Association along with many other state and specialty organizations, to escalate these concerns with UnitedHealthcare.

In response to our advocacy, UnitedHealthcare announced that the Optum Pay basic service would restore free access to payment remittances including:

• Providing detailed remittance information (downloadable PDFs), as well as access to 835 files for each payment processed through Optum Pay
• Up to 13 months of payment data

The remaining concern voiced by physicians was the limit of two users per Optum Pay basic account, which proved difficult to manage in large practice groups or where multiple users required access to payment remittances. Effective May 22, 2021, basic accounts will allow an unlimited number of users.

For more information:

• Optum Pay website
• UnitedHealthcare PRA fact sheet