UnitedHealth Group has paid out over $2 billion to healthcare providers harmed by the assault on its subsidiary Change Healthcare.
“We continue to make significant progress in restoring the services that were impacted by this cyberattack,” UnitedHealth CEO Andrew Witty stated in a press release. “We know this has been an enormous challenge for health care providers and we encourage any in need to contact us.”
UnitedHealth announced over a month ago that a cyber threat actor had compromised a portion of Change Healthcare’s information technology network. The fallout has caused turmoil throughout the United States’ health-care system. Change Healthcare provides e-prescription software and solutions for payment administration.
UnitedHealth, which cares for 152 million people, announced on Monday that it has begun delivering medical claims processing software, which will be available to thousands of consumers in the coming days. The corporation described it as “an important step in the resumption of services.”
On Friday, UnitedHealth announced that it has restored Change Healthcare’s electronic payments technology after rebooting 99% of its pharmacy network services earlier this month. It also implemented a temporary finance support scheme to assist health-care providers who were experiencing cash flow issues as a result of the attack.
UnitedHealth stated that the advances will not have to be repaid until claims flows return to normal. According to a press release, federal agencies such as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have proposed new methods to ensure that states and other stakeholders can make interim payments to providers.
According to a poll released by the American Hospital Association on Friday, 94% of hospitals have faced financial problems as a result of the Change Healthcare hack. More than 60% of the 1,000 hospitals polled expected the revenue damage to be roughly $1 million per day. Responses were received from March 9 to March 12.
“We continue to call on Congress and the Administration to take additional actions now to support providers as they deal with significant fallout from this historic attack,” Rick Pollack, CEO of the American Hospital Association, stated in the statement
The Biden administration stated on Wednesday that it has opened a probe into the corporation owing to the “unprecedented magnitude of the cyberattack.”
The inquiry is being conducted by the Office for Civil Rights of the United States Department of Health and Human Services. The OCR enforces the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act’s security, privacy, and breach reporting standards, which most health plans, providers, and clearinghouses must follow to secure patient information.
UnitedHealth has not specified what type of data was compromised in the incident, or whether it worked with the cyber threat actor to repair systems. The company stated that it has been working closely with law authorities and third parties such as Palo Alto Networks and Google Cloud’s Mandiant to investigate the incident.
