UnitedHealth said it was too dangerous for him to be discharged. Days later, it denied his care - STAT

At a STAT summit in May 2025, a woman described how UnitedHealth repeatedly denied care for her father at a rehabilitation facility after brain surgery. NaviHealth, which uses an algorithm to estimate patients' care needs and was doing so for UnitedHealth, told the family he needed only a couple of weeks, while his medical team expected at least three months. The family won an appeal on the ground that it was unsafe for him to come home; three days later, with his condition unchanged, they received another denial and lost. UnitedHealth said any allegation that it uses an AI algorithm to automatically deny claims is false.