Cyberattack: Change Healthcare provides status update

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. – Change Healthcare said in an update this week that it has made “strong progress” restoring services impacted by a cyberattack in February. 

In the April 22 update, Change Healthcare said that medical claims across the U.S. health system are moving at near-normal levels, as systems come back online or providers switch to other methods of submission. The company said it realizes there are a small number of providers who continue to be adversely impacted and it is working with them to find alternative submission solutions and will continue to provide financial support as needed. 

Change Healthcare also cited other areas of progress: 

• Payment processing by Change Healthcare, which represents approximately 6% of all payments in the U.S health care system, is at approximately 86% of pre-incident levels and is increasing as additional functionality is restored. 

• Other Change Healthcare services, including eligibility software and analytical tools, are being restored on a rolling basis with the active reconnection of our customers now the priority. To date, approximately 80% of functionality has been restored on the major platforms and products, and the company expects full restoration of other systems to be completed in the coming weeks. 

• Pharmacy services are now back to near-normal levels, with 99% of pre-incident pharmacies able to process claims. 

Parent company UnitedHealth Group has also announced support for people concerned about their personal data potentially being impacted based on preliminary findings from the ongoing investigation and review of the data involved in the cyberattack. 

Based on initial targeted data sampling to date, the company has found files containing protected health information (PHI) or personally identifiable information (PII), which could cover a substantial proportion of people in America. To date, the company has not seen evidence of exfiltration of materials such as doctors’ charts or full medical histories among the data. 

“We know this attack has caused concern and been disruptive for consumers and providers and we are committed to doing everything possible to help and provide support to anyone who may need it,” said Andrew Witty, CEO of UnitedHealth Group.   

People can visit a dedicated website at http://changecybersupport.com/ to get more information and details on these resources. A dedicated call center has also been established to offer free credit monitoring and identity theft protections for two years to anyone impacted. 

Related stories: 

• HME industry under strain 
• Cyberattack: ‘This just might be the final straw’ 
• Change Healthcare outage has ‘scary’ impact on HME 
• Blog: Change after Change