change health care will begin processing more than $14 billion in claims following last month’s cyberattack.
united health group Change’s parent company, UHG, said on its website on Friday (March 22) that it expected its largest clearing house to be back online by the end of the week. It starts flowing immediately after that”
The company has been working for the past month to restart services on Change following a Feb. 21 breach that disrupted health care payment systems across the country and prompted a federal investigation.
UnitedHealth announced it has paid out more than $2.5 billion to date in support to health care providers affected by the disruption.
“We recognize that this event has caused varying levels of impact among providers. Therefore, we continue to provide temporary financial assistance at no cost,” the company said. “We know that many health care providers, especially small health care facilities, are facing challenges, and we encourage those who need additional support to access these resources. ”
This month, the company announced: Critical services restored at Change Healthcare, about three weeks after the attack.
The same week, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR), which enforces HIPAA’s privacy, security, and breach notification rules, announced it was investigating the violation.
“Given the unprecedented scale “In the best interest of patients and healthcare providers regarding this cyberattack, OCR has begun an investigation into this incident,” OCR said in a “Dear Colleague” letter regarding the incident.
“OCR’s investigation of Change Healthcare and UHG will focus on whether a breach of protected health information occurred and Change Healthcare and UHG’s compliance with HIPAA regulations.”
UnitedHealth said it would cooperate with the investigation.
PYMNTS investigated the aftermath of a cyberattack this month that was apparently the work of the BlackCat ransomware group.
“Healthcare, like other sectors of the economy, have their own supply chain” PYMNTS wrote at the time. “And every supply chain has to have backups, redundancies and contingency plans in place.”
The American Hospital Association said organizations should use this event to test the security of their networks, recommending “backup technologies that make backups ‘immutable’, meaning they cannot be deleted, modified, or encrypted.” did.
