UnitedHealth Group’s Optum division is making its biggest push yet into patient care in Minnesota. It will open up to 19 new urgent-care centers in the “Land of 10,000 Lakes” by the end of 2017. The centers are under the MedExpress name.
Optum is the direct-health-services unit of Minnetonka, Minn.-based UnitedHealth Group, which runs UnitedHealthcare, America’s largest private-sector health insurer. The huge insurer’s move into clinics recalls the move by some hospital systems into becoming insurers.