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Sustainable Procurement

Our vision

UnitedHealth Group is committed to advancing responsible environmental and social sustainability practices across our supply chain. Our sustainability focus is evident in our interconnected and urgent objectives. These objectives include advancing health equity, improving access to affordable, high-quality medical care and addressing climate change. Details on our sustainability priorities and progress can be found at sustainability.uhg.com.

Our Sustainable Procurement program aims to achieve these objectives by partnering with our suppliers to minimize risk and strengthen the resilience of our supply chain, promote human rights, improve environmental health and accelerate our path to net-zero. Our program supports the economic development of underserved communities by ensuring diversity is an integral component of our supply chain. Our approach reflects our uncompromising commitment to integrity and our suppliers are expected to comply with all applicable laws and regulations while operating under the highest ethical standards.

Together we can utilize our shared reach, resources and resolve to achieve these important objectives and work toward the realization of our mission to help people live healthier lives and help make the health system work better for everyone.

Our expectations

UnitedHealth Group’s Supplier Compliance program webpage provides education and resources for our suppliers related to our compliance policies and procedures – including our Supplier Code of Conduct (the “Code”). The Code sets forth the base expectations and requirements for all suppliers doing business with UnitedHealth Group, which includes our supplier environmental, social and governance (ESG) expectations. The Code is incorporated by reference in our standard supplier contracts with additional ESG-related requirements set forth in supplier contracts where appropriate.

View Supplier Code of Conduct

Our approach

"Our purpose-driven approach to supply chain management leverages the expertise of supply partners to help deliver extraordinary results to our customers while improving environmental and social outcomes in the communities we serve."

Darren Harmon Senior Director of Supplier Diversity & Sustainability | UnitedHealth Group

Overview
Our Sustainable Procurement / Supplier ESG program goals and performance are reviewed by our board of directors throughout the year on an as needed basis and reviewed monthly by the executive leaders that comprise our Sustainable Procurement Council.
Our sustainable procurement strategy is informed by a supply chain ESG risk assessment, which includes broad-based ESG and human rights criteria. The assessment, conducted by a third party, strengthens collaboration with key suppliers and helps us manage sustainability risks.
Annually, we review the sustainability practices of critical suppliers to identify ESG policies, practices and goals. Through these reviews we gather supplier GHG data and feedback on how we can improve collaboration to reduce our environmental impact. This provides a more informed understanding of our suppliers’ efforts to promote human rights and supplier diversity within their own networks.
ESG progress is used in supplier selection and part of award criteria consideration for select suppliers. For every RFP (Request for Proposal), we target inclusion of at least one diverse supplier. We evaluate RFPs through a balanced score card, which considers diversity and sustainability progress alongside other key factors, including cost, quality, and service delivery.
We provide in-depth technical support programs to build capacity and improve supplier ESG performance in areas such as climate disclosure. We also support capacity building with our diverse suppliers through our Supplier Diversity Accelerator program. Corrective actions and improvement opportunities are identified and shared with select suppliers through our Supplier Performance Management scorecards.
Our procurement departments are informed throughout the year on program enhancements, including ESG training provisions.
Our procurement departments collaborate with our business segments to identify, engage and manage our supplier base to meet business objectives, enable growth and mitigate risk for UnitedHealth Group and the individuals we serve.
Environmental Sustainability
Mitigating climate risk is a key component of our ongoing sustainable procurement strategy. In June 2022, we committed to the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) Net-Zero Standard, a set of criteria based on the need to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
In 2022, we completed a comprehensive scope 3 emissions assessment, which identified the most significant categories of emissions from both upstream and downstream sources in our value chain. With this scope 3 assessment, we are better able to prioritize opportunities for action and work towards an approved emissions target, which will be reviewed by SBTi and shared in our 2023 Sustainability Report.
In 2022, we adopted the CDP Supply Chain program (formerly Carbon Disclosure Project) to better understand the emissions associated with our purchased goods and services. We requested CDP Climate Change Assessments from some of our largest suppliers to learn more about their sustainability efforts. We had an overall response rate of 83%, with 81% reporting emissions-related goals.
In 2023, we are targeting a key group of suppliers (representing 80%–85% of our 2021 baseline supply chain emissions) to complete the CDP Climate Change Assessment, which will help us improve our emissions calculation and assess supplier performance when making procurement decisions.
View our 2022 Sustainability Report
Supplier Diversity
UHG is committed to developing a supply base that reflects the full diversity of our customers and communities. Our diverse suppliers play an integral role in developing new and innovative ways to meet the increasing demands of our customers and to help people live healthier lives and help make the healthcare system work better for everyone. We recognize the importance of diverse suppliers and are committed to ensuring diversity is an integral part of our strategic sourcing and procurement processes. To ensure awareness of the importance of supplier diversity and ways to seamlessly integrate it into our business and procurement processes, we facilitate employee training throughout the year via road shows and/or online training resources.
In 2022, in addition to growing our Tier 1 (direct) spend with diverse suppliers, we increased our engagement with prime suppliers participating in our Tier 2 program. Key suppliers are expected to incorporate supplier diversity into their own sourcing practices and provide diverse vendors with opportunities to participate in subcontracts awarded in connection with UnitedHealth Group.
Our Supplier Diversity program continues to deliver significant progress in supporting the economic development of the communities we serve. In 2022 our program supported over seven thousand local community jobs and over $500 million in employee wages. Our cumulative spend with diverse suppliers over the last decade reached $4.8 billion USD.
See more about Supplier Diversity
Supplier Risk Management
UnitedHealth Group’s enterprise-wide Supplier Risk Management Program is governed by an Enterprise Vendor Risk Council. This group oversees the Supplier Risk Management Program with common standards, including regulatory and compliance requirements, applicable to suppliers participating in the health care value chain.
To mitigate supply chain disruptions, we engage in resiliency planning, including the identification of suppliers critical to our business functions, specifically in patient care and customer commitments. We maintain a process for coordinating critical supplier assessments, which are integrated into a comprehensive supplier profile and status report and can be shared across the organization, further helping us mitigate risks.
Supplier Performance Management
To help ensure key suppliers meet our performance expectations, we utilize a systematic Supplier Performance Management Program to monitor compliance with our Code of Conduct and monthly performance of contractual Service Level Agreements related to service delivery, quality and value delivery. Suppliers are asked to self-report performance against contractual service level agreements and key risk indicators on a monthly basis to allow business leaders to make informed decisions regarding sourcing initiatives.
Data-driven supplier performance score cards are shared quarterly with business leaders, risk colleagues and category managers to identify performance trends and areas of opportunity to drive improvement plans for underperforming suppliers. Suppliers are evaluated on criteria such as financial stability, cybersecurity and regulatory compliance, organization resiliency, diversity participation, sustainability progress and Net Promoter Score.

Contact

Please contact sustainableprocurement@uhg.com or your UnitedHealth Group relationship manager if you have any additional questions.