UnitedHealth Group Corporation is headquartered in Minnetonka, Minnesota, USA
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UnitedHealth Group Monday means the amount paid exceeds US$2 billion Helping healthcare providers affected by a cyber attack on subsidiary Change Healthcare.
“We continue to make significant progress in restoring services impacted by this cyberattack,” UnitedHealth CEO Andrew Witty said in a statement. Press release. “We know this is a huge challenge for healthcare providers and we encourage anyone in need to contact us.”
UnitedHealth disclosed nearly a month ago that cyber threat actors compromised part of Change Healthcare’s information technology network. The consequences have wreaked havoc on the entire U.S. health care system. Change Healthcare provides electronic prescribing software and tools for payment management, so the outage has left many providers temporarily unable to fill prescriptions or get reimbursed for services by insurance companies.
UnitedHealth said Monday it began releasing medical claims preparation software that will be available to thousands of customers in the coming days. The company called it “an important step toward restoring service.”
On Friday, UnitedHealth said it had restored Change Healthcare’s electronic payment platform after restarting 99% of its pharmacy network services earlier this month. It also launched a temporary financial aid program to help health care providers experiencing cash flow difficulties as a result of the attacks.
UnitedHealth said the advance does not need to be repaid until the claims process returns to normal.Federal agencies such as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have Additional options introduced to ensure that states and other stakeholders are able to make interim payments to providers, according to a press release.
A survey released Friday by the American Hospital Association found that 94% of hospitals Experienced the financial disruption caused by the Change Healthcare attack. More than 60% of the 1,000 hospitals surveyed said their revenue was impacted by approximately $1 million per day. Responses were collected between March 9 and 12.
“We continue to call on Congress and the administration to take additional immediate action to support providers as they deal with the significant impact of this historic attack,” AHA CEO Rick Pollack said in the release.
The Biden administration announced on Wednesday that it had launched an investigation into the company due to the “unprecedented scale of the cyberattack.”
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights is investigating. OCR enforces the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act’s security, privacy, and breach notification rules that most health plans, providers, and clearinghouses must comply with to protect health information.
UnitedHealth has not disclosed what data was compromised in the attack or whether it is working with cyber threat actors to restore systems. The company said it has been working closely with law enforcement and third parties such as Palo Alto Networks and Google Cloud’s Mandiant to assess the breach.
watch: Dr. Scott Gottlieb on the UnitedHealth hack
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