Health providers seek federal help, as Change Healthcare hack delays payments
Sen. Chuck Schumer has urged the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to intervene in response to the crippling health care ransomware attack by issuing advance payments to providers to lessen their financial burden.
Health-care providers and organizations are asking the federal government for help as the fallout from the recent Change Healthcare cyberattack continues.
“The health-care system needs certainty that the cash needed to finance patient care is going to flow,” said Molly Smith, group vice president for public policy at the American Hospital Association. The AHA on Monday wrote a letter asking congressional leaders for assistance, saying that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services should begin issuing advance payments to providers to lessen the financial burden they face.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., expressed the same concerns in a letter to CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure. “We can’t let hackers risk the financial stability of health-care providers and even critical care to patients across America,” he said. “CMS must act now to help our hospitals.”
He’s urging the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to immediately make “Accelerated and Advanced Payments available to the hospitals, pharmacies, and relevant providers who have been impacted by the Change Healthcare cyberattack.”
Optum, which is owned by UnitedHealth Group, said it was forced to disconnect more than 100 systems at its Change Healthcare unit after a February 21 ransomware attack. The downed systems, which together comprise the largest U.S. clearinghouse for medical insurance billings and payments and cover a range of other areas, including prescription processing, have caused severe problems for hospitals, pharmacies, clinics and other health-care providers.
Late last week, Optum said it would offer loans to affected providers. The company “is trying to create liquidity in the system, because they can’t reconstitute their systems quickly enough,” said Rob Lee, chief curriculum director and head of faculty at the SANS Institute, a cybersecurity training organization. “It was the only option in this case to maintain health-care functionality.”
The AHA also wrote to Dirk McMahon, president and chief operating officer of UnitedHealth, expressing concern about the structure of the loan program. The complexity of how the loan program is structured means some smaller providers are finding the loans Optum has offered aren’t close to what they need.
Related: Hacking at UnitedHealth’s Change Healthcare is still crippling the U.S. health system
Dr. Seth Eappen, head of Eappen Clinic in Oak Brook, Ill., said the outage has been hard on his psychiatry practice. With eight employees who see 250 to 300 patients a week, he had to liquidate around $100,000 of his personal stockholdings to keep payroll going and the business afloat since the outage, he said. He expected to be offered around $30,000 by Optum’s loan program, but after about an hour on the phone to sort out his application, he was offered $190 instead.
“It’s not even worth my time to click this button,” he said. “That’s less than what we generate for a basic follow-up appointment.”