UnitedHealth Stands Up Provider Financial Assistance After Change Cyberattack

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Dive Brief:

• UnitedHealth Group has set up a temporary financial assistance program for providers who have been unable to receive payments due to a cyberattack against its technology subsidiary Change Healthcare. 
• The program, furnished through Optum Financial Services, allows providers who receive payments processed by Change to apply for temporary funding based on prior claims volume, according to the company. The funds will need to be repaid after standard operations resume.
• Change also reported that a new instance of its Rx ePrescribing service was online Friday afternoon after completing tests with vendors and retail pharmacies. Clinical Exchange ePrescribing provider tools are still unavailable.

Dive Insight: 

The cyberattack on Change has disabled key functions of the healthcare sector for nearly two weeks, disrupting billing, eligibility checks, prior authorization requests and prescription fulfillment. 

The company, which was acquired by insurer UnitedHealth’s Optum segment in 2022, processes billions of healthcare transactions each year, according to a letter from the American Hospital Association.

Change first reported the outage on Feb. 21. Last week, the company said AlphV, also known as Blackcat — a ransomware group that has targeted the healthcare industry — had taken responsibility for the attack.

The outage has already had significant impacts on the industry, providers told Healthcare Dive last week. Some medical groups have been unable to receive and finalize payments from insurers and patients, which could become a major cash flow challenge particularly for smaller providers. 

The financial assistance is only for providers where payment distribution has been affected, not for claims submission disruptions, according to UnitedHealth. 

Though the intent behind the program is appreciated, it’s not enough to solve the significant cash flow problems, provider groups said. Workarounds for affected tasks like filing claims and prior authorization requests are time-consuming, removing staffers from other work, Anders Gilberg, senior vice president of Government Affairs at the Medical Group Management Association, 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,” he said.

The funding is only available to an “exceedingly small” number of hospitals and health systems, American Hospital Association CEO Richard Pollack wrote in a letter to UnitedHealth. 

The terms of the financial support are also onerous, requiring repayment within five days of receiving notice and allowing Optum Financial Services to take back funds without advance communication, according to the letter.

“UnitedHealth Group, which is a Fortune 5 company that brought in more than $370 billion in revenue and $22 billion in profit in 2023, can — and should — be doing more to address the far-reaching consequences that result from Change Healthcare’s inability to provide these essential hospital revenue cycle functions nearly two weeks after the attack,” Pollack wrote.