Back in 2003, when I joined UnitedHealth Group, the world saw us as a massive insurance consolidator. We were buying health plans, growing through M&A, becoming a Fortune 25 behemoth. That's what the analysts wrote. That's what the headlines said.
But inside the walls, the reality was different: We were a technology company.
During the "M&A Era," we weren't just buying health plans like Oxford, MAMSI, and PacifiCare for their physician networks. We were acquiring massive, fragmented data sets. While other industries were still figuring out the internet, UnitedHealth Group was investing over $1 billion a year in technology.
Let that sink in. A billion dollars. Annually. In 2007.
The Challenge
"Is my doctor in-network?"
When you merge three massive companies with dozens of disparate physician networks, finding the source of truth is extremely challenging. Hundreds of thousands of health professionals. Dozens of drug formularies. Pre-cloud infrastructure with in-house servers. Systems and code that didn't talk to each other.
My mandate was to build a unified platform—a "Single Source of Truth"—so that a call center agent in Orlando and a member in California on our website saw the exact same doctor network. The same answer. Every time.
This wasn't a nice-to-have. It was existential. If a member calls to ask whether their doctor is in-network and gets the wrong answer, they could face 10% coinsurance instead of a $100 copay. Thousands of dollars of difference. They lose trust. If they lose trust at scale, you lose the AARP contract. And we were fighting for a multi-billion-dollar AARP renewal.
Technology Is the Only Way to Humanize Complexity
Answering "Is my doctor in-network?" was only one of several large-scale technology initiatives. Leading a team of business professionals, we managed all of Ovations' digital properties—writing the cost-benefit analyses to justify the spending for UnitedHealth Group's 50+ division, doing over $30 billion annually in revenue.
We used the breadth of our technology and organizational capabilities to build the AARP Health Vision—a framework that aggregated every capability UnitedHealth Group owned into a single, cohesive experience for seniors. It wasn't just about insurance. It was about using technology to simplify the challenges of growing older.
Think about what seniors need: understanding their benefits, finding doctors, managing medications, navigating Medicare—aging with dignity. Each of those touchpoints was a potential failure point. Our job was to make them invisible.
The "It Just Makes Sense" brand platform we created with GSD&M wasn't marketing fluff. It was a promise backed by infrastructure. If it didn't "just make sense" in the call center, it wouldn't make sense in the ad.
The Lesson
Whether you're in healthcare, fintech, or building a youth sports platform—scale is not just about headcount. It's about the architecture of your data and systems. If you can't create a "single source of truth," you can't scale human trust.
Today, when I'm building Team Scout, I think about those lessons frequently. A coach in Kansas City traveling to a tournament in Florida needs to see the same schedule, the same roster, the same information. That's not a feature. That's the foundation.
UnitedHealth Group taught me that the biggest companies in the world are really technology companies—even when they don't look like it from the outside. The question isn't whether you're in tech. The question is whether your technology is good enough to make complexity feel simple.