Nine days after a cyberattack that disrupted pharmacy services across the U.S., UnitedHealth Group has established an alternate system and created a financial assistance program for healthcare providers, the company announced Friday.
Change Healthcare, part of UnitedHealth Group's Optum subsidiary, opened a temporary version of its Rx ePrescribing service at 2 p.m. EST Friday for drugstores, hospital and nursing home pharmacies, and other affected providers. The healthcare sector has endured chaos since the ransomware group BlackCat (also known as ALPHV or Noberus) allegedly breached Change Healthcare Feb. 21.
Related: Change Healthcare attack: What to know about cybersecurity
The American Hospital Association, the National Community Pharmacists Association and other industry voices have complained that the ongoing Change Healthcare outage is causing financial problems.
To answer that, UnitedHealth Group launched a lending program through Optum Financial Services Friday.
"We understand the urgency of resuming payment operations and continuing the flow of payments through the healthcare ecosystem. While we are working to resume standard payment operations, we recognize that some providers who receive payments from payers that were processed by Change Healthcare may need more immediate access to funding," UnitedHealth Group said in a notice on its website.
"For provider organizations impacted by that payer system outage, we’ve established a temporary funding assistance program to help with short-term cash flow needs. No fees. No interest. No other associated costs. Once standard payment operations resume, the funds will simply need to be repaid," the company said.
Change Healthcare processes more than 15 billion healthcare transactions a year, including claims, prior authorization requests and reimbursements, according to the company.
"Our data suggests pharmacy claims are flowing at near-normal levels" and that 85% of medical claims are successfully being processed through backup mechanisms, UnitedHealth Group said.
The breached Change Healthcare systems will stay disconnected for the time being, UnitedHealth Group said. "Our systems remain offline because of our diligence, not because of compromise. They will remain offline until we are certain we can turn them back on safely. We took action so you did not have to disconnect," the company said.
The Medical Group Management Association expressed support for the offer of financial help but called on UnitedHealth Group to do more.
"While in some cases group practices have been able to enact workarounds for various impacts, such as filing claims and prior authorization requests, the fact remains they are largely time-consuming and inefficient, taking away critical time and resources from patient care," Medical Group Management Association spokesperson Anders Gilberg said in a statement. "We hope UnitedHealth Group will soon provide relief in those other areas, as continuing to operate in this fashion is simply unsustainable."
