Caregivers and care recipients

Caregiver access allows an individual who is not a member of your plan to use your account to manage your settings, order your prescriptions, or perform other actions on your behalf. This is ideal for users who may be medically incapacitated and unable to take such actions on their own. Once caregiver access is initiated by a member, members or non-members can be granted caregiver access to your account.

A caregiver can be a relative who isn't a member of the care recipient's plan, a friend, or a health care professional. A care recipient is an individual who may require a caregiver to operate their Optum Rx account on their behalf. A care recipient may be yourself or another registered member of your plan. For more information on caregiver management and how it differs from manage plan members, please see the Caregiver FAQ below.

Note: A caregiver must be at least 18 years old.

Before you send an invitation, you will need to know your caregiver's first and last name, along with their email address. You can invite an individual to be your caregiver by going to the caregiver management section of your account and selecting Add a caregiver (under My caregivers) and entering the requested information. When you invite a caregiver to manage your account, a special access code is emailed to that individual, which they can then use to accept your invitation.

After navigating to the Caregiver management page and completing the Add a caregiver form, an invitation to be a caregiver via email containing an access code will be sent to your caregiver’s email address. The invitation will expire in 30 days. You will also be able to send reminder emails. 

Your caregiver will either sign in to their own Optum Rx account to accept your invitation and input their access code, or they will accept the invitation and input their code as a non-member. 

Your caregiver can now sign in to and manage your account on your behalf. 

Once a caregiver has accepted your invitation, your caregiver management page will be updated with their name and an option to manage their access.

When a care recipient sends out an invitation, the caregiver they have chosen will receive an email invitation with a unique access code. As the caregiver, select the appropriate link in the email, identifying yourself as a member or non-member, and you will be prompted to input your access code. If you are already an Optum Rx member, you may also sign in to your account, navigate to My caregiver access and select Accept caregiver invitation (located under My care recipients) and you will be asked to input the caregiver access code from your email. Please note that non-members must complete a special registration to become caregivers on the Optum Rx website, and will be guided to a unique non-member caregiver account homepage.

Once your caregiver access has been set up, you can switch to your care recipient’s account at any time by selecting your intended care recipient under the caregiver access dropdown menu on the top right of your screen. You can use the same menu to switch back to your own account when you are finished managing your care recipient’s account.

If you're an Optum Rx member, you may remove a caregiver at any time by navigating to the Caregiver management section of your account, finding your listed caregiver, and simply clicking Remove. Non-members may do the same from their special non-member caregiver homepage.

If you're an Optum Rx member, you may remove your caregiver access to a care recipient at any time by navigating to the Caregiver management section of your account, finding your intended care recipient, and simply clicking Remove. Non-members may do the same from their special non-member caregiver homepage.