UnitedHealthcare, Optum Honor Brian Thompson With Annual Week Of Service
Summarize this article with:
InnovationHealthcareUnitedHealthcare, Optum Honor Brian Thompson With Annual Week Of ServiceByBruce Japsen,Senior Contributor.Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Bruce Japsen writes about healthcare business and policy.Follow AuthorDec 14, 2025, 04:00pm ESTDec 14, 2025, 05:18pm EST A year after UnitedHealth Group lost UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, his tens of thousands of colleagues are remembered him with a week of service. In this photo, UnitedHealthcare (UHC) health insurance company signage is displayed on an office building in Phoenix, Arizona on July 19, 2023. (Photo by Patrick T. Fallon / AFP) (Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images)AFP via Getty ImagesA year after UnitedHealth Group lost UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson to an assassin’s bullets on the company’s annual investor day, his tens of thousands of colleagues are remembering him this month with a week of service. At the annual Forbes Healthcare Summit in New York, Dr. Patrick Conway, chief executive officer of Optum, the healthcare services business of UnitedHealth, disclosed how Thompson is being honored. Thompson, a father of two who was CEO of the nation’s largest health insurance company, was shot dead before a UnitedHealth Group investor meeting on Dec. 4, 2024 outside a Hilton hotel in Midtown Manhattan. “It was devastating that he was taken from us in a cruel murder," Conway said December 4 of this month at the Forbes meeting held at NYU Langone Health of his late colleague. "A boy from Iowa. Just salt of the earth. And what we are doing is having a week of service in his honor. I helped pack meals on Tuesday. We will continue to do that annually on a go-forward basis.”UnitedHealth employees volunteered with more than 200 organizations across the country and will continue to do so every December during the week of Thompson’s death.Forbes2025 Forbes Healthcare Summit | Healing Healthcare: Finding Solutions for Today's Fractured SystemMORE FOR YOUThis month in New York, Luigi Mangione, the man accused of fatally shooting Thompson has been in pretrial hearings. Mangione has pleaded not guilty to state charges related to Thompson’s murder. He also faces federal charges. Meanwhile, UnitedHealth and its employees are forging ahead. At the Forbes event, Conway discussed the challenges and opportunities ahead for the company, including how artificial intelligence is improving healthcare delivery and outcomes. “We truly believe it will transform healthcare in positive ways,” Conway said of A.I. in his 15-minute interview at the Forbes event.Optum has more than 2,000 clinics across the country, owns the pharmacy benefit management company OptumRx, 370 ambulatory surgery centers, more than 700 home health agencies, 265 hospice centers and more than $250 billion in annual revenue. “Brian more than anybody was about making the health system better,” Conway said of Thompson at the Forbes Healthcare Summit. "And dedicated to that. And he would want us to get after it and keep working to make the health system better for everyone, which is our mission." Editorial StandardsReprints & PermissionsLOADING VIDEO PLAYER...FORBES’ FEATURED Video