CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Healthcare providers, large and small, throughout West Virginia continue to deal with the impact created by the cyberattack on Change Healthcare.
“This outage has prevented them from submitting claims to insurance companies, stopped payments coming back into the facilities and it’s also impacting patients abilities to receive prior authorization for timely care and pick-up prescriptions and their local pharmacy,” West Virginia Hospital Association Vice President, Financial Policy Melanie Dempsey said Thursday on MetroNews “Talkline.”
Change Healthcare is a unit of UnitedHealth Group. The federal agency, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released a statement earlier this week on the attack.
“HHS is in regular contact with UHG leadership, state partners, and with numerous external stakeholders to better understand the nature of the impacts and to ensure the effectiveness of UHG’s response,” the statement said. “HHS has made clear its expectation that UHG does everything in its power to ensure continuity of operations for all health care providers impacted and HHS appreciates UHG’s continuous efforts to do so.”
West Virginia providers are looking for options to get payments into their hands, Dempsey said. She said the cost of doing business hasn’t halted during the cyberattack and that’s put some providers in a bind.
“It’s becoming increasingly difficult to continue in the face of this financial vulnerability,” Dempsey said.
Patients will continue to be treated, according to Dempsey, but delays are possible, including in the area of pre-authorization, if the situation isn’t cleared up.
“I don’t think any patient, confidently, will be turned away from service but providers are going to start having trouble making those obligations,” Dempsey predicted.
Dempsey said HHS and CMS (The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) are considering loans for some healthcare providers.
It’s not surprising a platform like Change Healthcare would come under attack considering the information it has access to, Dempsey said.
“Healthcare providers have become a very high-valued target for cyberattack because there’s so much demographic, medical and financial information tucked in those systems,” Dempsey said.