UnitedHealth Group Inc. headquarters is positioned in Minnetonka, Minnesota, USA
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said on Monday that more than had been paid $2 billion to assist healthcare providers who were affected by a cyber attack on a subsidiary of Change Healthcare.
“We continue to make significant progress in restoring services impacted by this cyberattack,” UnitedHealth CEO Andrew Witty said in a speech press release. “We know this has been a huge challenge for healthcare providers and we encourage anyone in need to contact us.”
Nearly a month ago, UnitedHealth disclosed that a cybercriminal group had breached a part of Change Healthcare’s IT network. The effects of the disaster wreaked havoc throughout the US healthcare system. Change Healthcare offers e-prescribing software and payment management tools, so the outages left many providers temporarily unable to refill medications or get reimbursed for his or her services from insurers.
UnitedHealth, which provides care 152 million people, said Monday that it has began releasing medical claims preparation software that shall be available to hundreds of consumers in the subsequent few days. The company called it “an important step towards resuming services.”
UnitedHealth on Friday said it had restored its Change Healthcare electronic payments platform after restarting 99% of its pharmacy network services earlier this month. A short lived financial assistance program has also been introduced to assist healthcare providers experiencing money flow problems in consequence of the attack.
UnitedHealth said the advances wouldn’t must be repaid until claims flow returned to normal. Federal agencies resembling the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have already done this additional options have been introduced According to the announcement, countries and other interested parties will have the opportunity to make interim payments to suppliers.
This was shown by a study published on Friday by the American Hospital Association 94% of hospitals experienced financial disruption in consequence of the Change Healthcare attack. More than 60% of the 1,000 hospitals surveyed estimated that their revenue can be roughly $1 million per day. Responses were collected between March 9 and 12.
“We continue to call on Congress and the administration to take additional action now to support providers as they navigate the significant impacts of this historic attack,” AHA CEO Rick Pollack said in an announcement.
The Biden administration announced Wednesday that it was opening an investigation into the corporate as a consequence of the “unprecedented scale of the cyberattack.”
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights is investigating. The OCR Act enforces the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act’s security, privacy, and breach notification principles that the majority health plans, providers, and clearinghouses are required to follow to guard health information.
UnitedHealth didn’t disclose what kind of data was compromised within the attack or whether it worked with the cybercriminal to revive its systems. The company says it’s working closely with law enforcement and third parties resembling Palo Alto Networks and Google Cloud’s Mandiant to evaluate the breach.
