Ongoing Cyberattack Impacts UnitedHealth’s Change Healthcare: Pharmacies Adapt
TL/DR –
Change Healthcare’s systems have been down for seven days following a cyber attack that allowed a threat actor to infiltrate its network. While most U.S. pharmacies have created electronic workarounds to mitigate the impact, some offline processing systems have been set up. As yet, UnitedHealth has not disclosed the nature of the cyber attack on Change Healthcare, but stresses that the attack impacts the entire healthcare sector.
Seventh Day of Disruptions for Change Healthcare Due to Cyberattack
After a cyber threat actor accessed its network, Change Healthcare’s systems remain down for a seventh day. UnitedHealth Group, the parent company, stated that a majority of U.S. pharmacies have established electronic workarounds to reduce the effect of the disruption.
Breach Detected and Systems Isolated
UnitedHealth Group discovered a “suspected nation-state-associated” threat actor had breached part of Change Healthcare’s IT network on Wednesday, as stated in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The affected systems were quickly isolated and disconnected.
Impact on Pharmacies and Health Systems
Change Healthcare, a provider of payment and revenue cycle management tools, has seen its system outages disrupt operations in pharmacies and health systems nationwide. UnitedHealth announced that over 90% of the nation’s pharmacies have implemented modified electronic claims processing workarounds, while the remainder have established offline processing systems.
UnitedHealth and Change Healthcare
UnitedHealth, the largest healthcare company in the U.S. by market cap, owns healthcare provider Optum. Optum services over 100 million patients in the U.S., according to its website. In 2022, Change Healthcare merged with Optum.
Assessing the Breach
Both UnitedHealthcare and UnitedHealth Group’s systems were reportedly unaffected by the attack according to updates from Change Healthcare. UnitedHealth has been working in collaboration with external partners such as Palo Alto Networks and Google Cloud’s Mandiant to evaluate the breach.
Increasing Healthcare Cyberattacks
The cyberattack on Change Healthcare follows a record year for health-related cybercrime. Notably, 725 large health-care security breaches occurred in 2023, a slight increase from 720 in the previous year, according to a HIPAA Journal report from January.
Impact of Change Healthcare’s Breach
The cyberattack’s repercussions are being felt across the U.S. healthcare system, though UnitedHealth hasn’t detailed which Change Healthcare systems have been affected. CVS Health reported some disruptions to its business operations, while Walgreens stated that its pharmacy operations and the majority of its prescriptions were unaffected by the breach.
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