Change Healthcare is the target of a cyberattack, affecting pharmacies nationwide Wednesday. (Photo by T. Schneider/Shutterstock),
ACROSS AMERICA — The source of a cyberattack that targeted one of the nation’s largest prescription processors — which services 30,000 pharmacies nationwide and left many unable to fulfill prescriptions Thursday — was likely associated with a nation-state, and the attackers likely gained access to some information technology systems, according to documents filed on the SEC’s website.
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UnitedHealth Group on Wednesday identified that a “suspected nation-state associated cyber security threat actor” gained access to some of the Change Healthcare information technology systems, the documents said. After learning of the attack, UnitedHealth “proactively isolated the impacted systems from other connecting systems” in the interest of protecting its partners and patients, as well as to contain, assess and remediate the incident.
UnitedHealth was working to restore the systems and resume normal operations “as soon as possible,” but couldn’t estimate how long the disruption would last.
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“The Company has retained leading security experts, is working with law enforcement and notified customers, clients and certain government agencies,” the SEC document said. “At this time, the Company believes the network interruption is specific to Change Healthcare systems, and all other systems across the Company are operational.”
Notably, certain networks and transactional services might not be accessible during the disruption, the documents said.
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“As of the date of this report, the Company has not determined the incident is reasonably likely to materially impact the Company’s financial condition or results of operations,” the filing said.
The attack left many prescriptions unable to be processed.
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Change Healthcare did not provide much detail about the cyberattack against the Tennessee-based company, but has said the matter was being addressed. Staff first became aware of the attack Wednesday, when “enterprise-wide connectivity issues” arose, the company said.
The disruption could last at least through Thursday.
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“Once we became aware of the outside threat, in the interest of protecting our partners and patients, we took immediate action to disconnect our systems to prevent further impact,” read the update.
The cyberattack seems to be exclusive to Change Healthcare as other UnitedHealth systems remained operational, the company said.
Change Healthcare, which handles 15 billion healthcare transactions yearly, offers “payment cycle management solutions,” The HIPAA Journal reported. On its website, Change Healthcare said 1 in 3 U.S. patient records are passed through its solutions.
Pharmacies in some states have reported direct impacts from the outage.
The systems at Michigan’s Scheurer Health have since been revived; however, Scheurer previously reported on Facebook not being able to process payments for prescriptions through insurance.
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“Due to a nationwide outage from the largest prescription processor in North America, we are currently unable to process prescriptions at any of our four locations of Scheurer Family Pharmacy. We are being told that this is temporary but have not been given a time for restored services,” Scheurer said in the post Wednesday.
Angela Lackie, Scheurer’s pharmacy director, spoke with the Huron Daily Tribune on the matter.
“When we process a prescription, we send the information to Change Healthcare, which then sends it to the insurance companies,” Lackie told the news outlet. “The issue is at Change Healthcare. This happens from time to time, but this is just longer than usual, which is why we decided to put out the update.”
Fox Business reported both McConnell Air Force Base’s 22nd Medical Group in Kansas and Canadian Lakes Pharmacy in Michigan reported being affected by the outage.
TechCrunch reported UnitedHealth finalized a merger of the healthcare services company, Optum, and Change Healthcare in a $7.8 billion deal in 2022,
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” (This) allowed Optum broad access to patient records on tens of millions of Americans. Optum provides technology and data to insurance companies and healthcare services. Both Optum and Change Healthcare are owned by health insurance giant UnitedHealth Group,” TechCrunch reported.
And in California, Naval Hospital Camp Pendleton said “all Camp Pendleton and associated pharmacies are unable to process any prescription claims.”
“We are only able to assist patients with emergency and urgent prescriptions from hospital providers at this time,” the hospital tweeted.
TriCare, a military health plan for service members and their families, tweeted Thursday afternoon that the cyberattack impacted military pharmacies worldwide, and some retail pharmacies nationally.
“You can contact your military hospital and clinic or retail pharmacy for the latest local updates,” TriCare said.
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TriCare added: “Military clinics and hospitals will provide outpatient prescriptions through a manual procedure until this issue is resolved. Military pharmacies will give priority to urgent prescriptions followed by routine prescriptions. Each military hospital and clinic will continue to offer pharmacy operations based on their local manning and resources.”
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