A cyberattack on the United States’ largest health care payment system in the country, Change Healthcare, has left hospitals, clinics and independent physicians with major problems to their systems — and providers in Connecticut are no exception.
In a news briefing at the nation's Capitol Friday morning, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) urged the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to relieve some of the financial pressure providers in the state have been facing in the last month.
“What's needed now is advance payments, not the trickle that Change Healthcare has provided, not the band-aid that is shockingly inadequate,” he said.
“We have called upon the secretary of Health and Human Services to make available robust, easy-to-access payment so that our health care providers can continue serving their patients,” Blumenthal added.
Paul Kidwell, senior vice president of the Connecticut Hospital Association, said the parent company of Change Healthcare, UnitedHealth, claims they’ll be reactivating their claims system within the next week. But he said it’ll take much longer than that to get providers' systems into the condition they were in pre-attack.
“All of the claims that have been flowing slowly, or being held up, will have to be processed and adjudicated without all of the normal things that we do to those claims to make sure that they go through smoothly,” Kidwell said. “And that will be months in the making. So we do need assistance now and into the coming months to make sure that process works for patients.”
Blumenthal also called for UnitedHealth and Change Healthcare to take accountability for the attack's aftermath and asked for further investigation.
“In my view, there ought to be an investigation not only by [Health and Human Services] but also by Congress into whether there is civil or even potentially criminal liability here,” Blumenthal said.
The Department of Health and Human Services announced Wednesday that it would open an investigation into Change Healthcare, to learn how much federally-protected medical information was exposed, if any. The investigation is also being conducted to determine if Change Healthcare had adhered to U.S. privacy laws before the cyberattack.
