UnitedHealth Group Inc. headquarters stands in Minnetonka, Minnesota, U.S.
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UnitedHealth Group said Monday that it’s paid out greater than $2 billion to assist health-care providers who’ve been affected by the cyberattack on subsidiary Change Healthcare.
“We proceed to make significant progress in restoring the services impacted by this cyberattack,” UnitedHealth CEO Andrew Witty said in a press release. “We all know this has been an infinite challenge for health care providers and we encourage any in have to contact us.”
UnitedHealth disclosed nearly a month ago that a cyber threat actor breached a part of Change Healthcare’s information technology network. The fallout has wreaked havoc across the U.S. health-care system. Change Healthcare offers e-prescription software and tools for payment management, so the interruptions left many providers temporarily unable to fill medications or get reimbursed for his or her services by insurers.
UnitedHealth, which provides look after 152 million people, said on Monday that it began releasing medical claims preparation software, which can be available to 1000’s of shoppers in the following several days. The corporate called it “a crucial step within the resumption of services.”
On Friday, UnitedHealth said it restored Change Healthcare’s electronic payments platform, after rebooting 99% of its pharmacy network services earlier this month. It also introduced a brief funding assistance program to assist health-care providers experiencing money flow trouble due to the attack.
UnitedHealth said the advances won’t should be repaid until claims flows return to normal. Federal agencies just like the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services have introduced additional options to be sure that states and other stakeholders could make interim payments to providers, based on a release.
A survey published by the American Hospital Association on Friday found that 94% of hospitals have experienced financial disruptions from the Change Healthcare attack. Greater than 60% of the 1,000 hospitals surveyed estimated the revenue hit to be around $1 million per day. Responses were collected between March 9 and March 12.
“We proceed to call on Congress and the Administration to take additional actions now to support providers as they take care of significant fallout from this historic attack,” AHA CEO Rick Pollack said in the discharge.
The Biden administration announced Wednesday that it has launched an investigation into the corporate as a consequence of the “unprecedented magnitude of the cyberattack.”
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights is carrying out the inquiry. The OCR enforces the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act’s security, privacy and breach notification rules, which most health plans, providers and clearinghouses are required to follow to guard health information.
UnitedHealth hasn’t disclosed what kind of information was compromised within the attack, or whether it cooperated with the cyber threat actor to be able to restore systems. The corporate said it has been working closely with law enforcement and third parties like Palo Alto Networks and Google Cloud’s Mandiant to evaluate the breach.
