Change Healthcare announced on Friday the completion of its new electronic prescription service, aiming to alleviate pressure on pharmacies and physicians amidst an ongoing cyberattack fallout.
UnitedHealth Group, the parent company of Change Healthcare, concurrently launched a temporary funding assistance initiative to aid providers in managing short-term cash flow challenges caused by the cyber incident.
The cyber threat, which breached part of UnitedHealth’s IT network on February 21 according to SEC filings, prompted immediate isolation and disconnection of affected systems upon detection. This incident has since disrupted operations across the healthcare sector.
Change Healthcare specializes in payment and revenue cycle management tools facilitating transactions between providers and major insurance companies, including electronic prescription software.
In their latest update, Change Healthcare reported successful testing and deployment of a new version of their “Rx ePrescribing service,” verified with vendors and retail pharmacy partners.
The service was made available to all customers from 2 p.m. ET on Friday. However, existing tools for Clinical Exchange ePrescribing providers remain non-operational.
Additionally, UnitedHealth launched a dedicated website to provide updates on Change Healthcare’s response to the attack.
The site includes information about the newly established temporary funding assistance program aimed at providers experiencing payment distribution interruptions.
UnitedHealth emphasized that the program carries no fees, interest, or additional costs, with funds to be repaid once standard operations resume. Providers can assess their eligibility via a link provided on the new website.
“We recognize the critical need to resume payment operations and maintain the flow of payments throughout the healthcare ecosystem,” stated UnitedHealth on the site.
The company clarified that the funding assistance program is not designed for providers encountering disruptions in claims submissions.
For such cases, UnitedHealth advised using manual workarounds and assured ongoing efforts to address the remaining 15% of claims that cannot be handled through workarounds.
By late Monday night, UnitedHealth reported that over 90% of the nation’s pharmacies had implemented adjusted electronic claims processing workarounds, while the remainder had established offline processing systems.
As of Friday, the company indicated that pharmacy claims are processing at nearly normal levels based on their data.
Despite ten consecutive days of system downtime, UnitedHealth remains committed to restoring full operational capacity swiftly.
