A surgeon has issued a negative review to UnitedHealthcare after the insurance giant allegedly challenged her patient’s care while she was on the operating table.
Dr. Elisabeth Potter, a plastic surgeon in Texas, claims she was performing breast reconstructive surgery on a breast cancer survivor when she received a phone call in the operating room.
Halfway through the operation, Dr. Potter was reportedly told to contact UnitedHealthcare “right now” about the patient on the operating table, forcing her to halt the surgery and take the call.
The insurance representative reportedly said he needed information about the patient’s diagnosis to determine “whether her hospital stay should be justified.”
Dr. Potter said in a TikTok video this week: ‘I thought, “Do you understand that she is sleeping now and has breast cancer?” and the gentleman said, “Actually no. That’s another department that would know that information.
“I’ve never experienced this before,” she said. ‘It’s gotten out of hand. The insurance has gotten out of hand. I have no other words.’
UnitedHealthcare told DailyMail.com that Dr. Potter are unconfirmed and that the company would never ask a doctor to step out of the operating room.
A company spokesperson told DailyMail.com: ‘There are no insurance-related circumstances that require a doctor to leave surgery and it would pose potential safety risks if he did.
“We did not ask for, nor would we ever expect, a physician to interrupt patient care to answer a call, and we will be reaching out to the provider and hospital to understand why these unorthodox actions were taken.”
Dr. Elisabeth Potter, a plastic surgeon in Texas (pictured here), was forced to stop surgery on a breast cancer patient after UnitedHealthcare reportedly asked whether the patient’s care should be justified.
Stopping surgery can increase the risk of infections because the area outside the operating room is not sterile (stock image)
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Dr. Potter claims she performed a bilateral deep inferior epigastric perforator (DIEP) flap procedure, which reconstructs breasts after a mastectomy.
Mastectomies, in which one or both breasts are removed, are performed on breast cancer patients to remove diseased tissue.
According to data from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS), approximately 100,000 breast reconstructive surgeries are performed annually, making it one of the most common procedures in the US.
Without insurance, DIEP flap surgery costs anywhere from $30,000 to $50,000.
A 2020 ASPS survey found that between 2012 and 2017, 28 percent of patients did not receive coverage for their breast reconstructive surgeries.
Dr. Potter claims she had to leave the operating room to answer the call, which could have increased the risk of infection to the patient as the area outside the operating room is not sterile.
The patient would also need to be under anesthesia for a longer period of time, which increases the risk of complications such as nausea and blood clots.
UnitedHealthcare is the nation’s largest health insurance conglomerate.
The company expected to generate $450 billion in revenue by 2025, with Thompson earning a salary of about $10 million a year.
UnitedHealthcare’s leadership is in trouble over a history of denying medically necessary treatment, an issue that allegedly prompted Luigi Mangione, 26, to kill one of the company’s top executives.
UnitedHealthcare has also been accused of using an AI program with a 90 percent error rate to deny claims.
UnitedHealthcare’s leadership is under fire for denied claims following the murder of CEO Brian Thompson, pictured here
In the weeks following Thompson’s murder, patients and healthcare providers like Dr. Potter shared their stories of denied claims.
A pediatric neurology nurse on Reddit said the company allegedly denied anti-epileptic drugs for children with epilepsy.
The nurse wrote, “We have UHC seizure medications that we can definitively say will benefit the patients based on their EEG results because they are not UHC’s preferred medications.
‘The patient must first allow the preferred medication to fail. And if it doesn’t work, it means the patient will have to suffer a whole bunch of attacks. So these kids have to have their brains taken out to get a drug that we know will control their seizures.”
Uncontrolled seizures can damage neurons and brain cells, leading to irreversible brain damage.
And a bombshell report published by ProPublica shows that UnitedHealthcare has reportedly worked to eliminate therapies for more than 10,000 autistic children.
TikTok users reacted with shock and disgust to Dr.’s video. Potter.
One user said: “So instead of calling the other department within United, they call a surgeon from the operating room?”
Another wrote: ‘That’s outrageous! A doctor leaving an operating room to talk to their insurance company. No.’
And someone said, ‘That is literally INSANE.’