{"id":24674,"date":"2024-03-10T03:04:41","date_gmt":"2024-03-10T08:04:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=24674"},"modified":"2024-03-10T03:04:47","modified_gmt":"2024-03-10T08:04:47","slug":"were-hemorrhaging-money-us-health-clinics-try-to-stay-open-after-unprecedented-cyberattack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=24674","title":{"rendered":"We\u2019re hemorrhaging money\u2019: US health clinics try to stay open after unprecedented cyberattack"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For more than two weeks, a cyberattack<\/a> has disrupted business at health care providers<\/a> across the United States, forcing small clinics to scramble to stay in business and exposing the fragility of the billing system that underpins American health care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re hemorrhaging money,\u201d said Catherine Reinheimer, practice manager at the Foot and Ankle Specialty Center in the suburbs of Philadelphia. \u201cThis will probably be the last week that we can keep everybody on full-time without having to do something,\u201d she told CNN. The center is considering taking out a loan to keep the lights on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cyberattack disrupted the computer networks of Change Healthcare, which serves thousands of hospitals, insurers and pharmacies nationwide. It prevented some insurance payments<\/a> on prescription drugs from processing<\/a>, leaving many care providers footing the bill up front and hoping to get reimbursed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Change Healthcare, part of UnitedHealth, is one of handful of companies that make up the central nervous system of the US health care market. Its services allow doctors to look up patients\u2019 insurance, pharmacies to process prescriptions, and health clinics to submit claims so they can get paid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Health care groups have pleaded with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to offer medical practices a financial lifeline. The department on Tuesday said it was taking extraordinary steps to help get claims processed, but some care providers say it\u2019s not nearly enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mel Davies, chief financial officer of Oregon Oncology Specialists, told CNN she is worried that the private clinic that treats 16,000 cancer patients annually could be forced to close if she doesn\u2019t get financial relief soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cash flow has dropped by 50% in the two weeks since the cyberattack, she said. \u201cThe magnitude of this is off the charts for us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Thursday night, half a month since the saga began, Change Healthcare announced plans<\/a> to have its electronic payment platform back online by March 15 and its network for submitting claims restored the following week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the financial wreckage caused by the cyberattack will take a lot longer to clean up, health providers and analysts say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe prospect of a month or more without a restored Change Healthcare claims system emphasizes the critical need for economic assistance to physicians, including advancing funds to financially stressed medical practices,\u201d Jesse Ehrenfeld, president of the American Medical Association, said in a statement Friday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reinheimer, who works at the foot treatment center, said Change Healthcare\u2019s plan to bringing systems back online was a \u201clight at the end of the tunnel \u2026 However, it doesn\u2019t solve the immediate issue, which is lack of money today, tomorrow and next week.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The chaos caused by the cyberattack is prompting a reckoning for senior US cybersecurity officials about the vulnerabilities in hugely important companies that underpin the health care system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Change Healthcare hack \u201cis an evolution beyond\u201d other ransomware attacks on individual hospitals \u201cthat shows the entire system is a house of cards,\u201d a senior US cybersecurity official told CNN.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Health care executives have been sounding the alarm for several days that the cyberattack is causing severe financial strain on the sector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Medical Group Management Association, which represents 15,000 medical practices, has warned of the \u201cdevastating\u201d financial fallout from the hack and of \u201csignificant cash flow problems\u201d facing doctors. The ransomware attack has \u201chad a severe ongoing impact on cancer practices and their patients,\u201d the nonprofit Community Oncology Alliance said this week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A week ago, Change Healthcare announced plans for a temporary loan program to get money flowing to health care providers affected by the outage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Richard Pollack, head of the American Hospital Association representing thousands of hospitals nationwide, slammed<\/a> the proposal as \u201cnot even a Band-Aid on the payment problems.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cyberattack could end up costing Change Healthcare billions of dollars in lost revenue and clients, said Carter Groome, chief executive of cybersecurity firm First Health Advisory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is a huge, huge moneymaker being essentially the middleman or the intermediary between the insurance companies,\u201d Groome told CNN.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Change Healthcare has blamed the hack on a multinational ransomware gang called ALPHV or BlackCat that the Justice Department says has been responsible for ransomware attacks on victims around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A hacker affiliated with ALPHV this week claimed that the company had paid a $22 million ransom to try to recover data stolen in the hack. Tyler Mason, a spokesperson for Change Healthcare, declined to comment when asked if the company had paid off the hackers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Private experts who track cryptocurrency payments said the hacking group had received a $22 million payment, but it was unclear who made the payment. \u201cA cryptocurrency account associated with ALPHV received a $22 million payment [on March 1],\u201d Ari Redbord, global head of policy at blockchain-tracing firm TRM Labs, told CNN.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Joshua Corman, a cybersecurity expert who has focused on the health sector for years, the Change Healthcare cyberattack is clear evidence that the US health sector is not as resilient as it needs to be in a crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Acquisitions that have merged multibillion-dollar healthcare companies have accentuated the problem so that \u201ca single point of failure can have outsized, cascading reach and consequences,\u201d said Corman, who helped lead a federal taskforce to protect coronavirus research from hacking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If federal officials \u201cdon\u2019t identify the systemically important entities proactively, our adversaries will continue to do it for us \u2026 while we burn,\u201d he told CNN.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

edition<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For more than two weeks, a cyberattack has disrupted business at health care providers across the United States, forcing small clinics to scramble to stay in business and exposing the fragility of the billing system that underpins American health care. \u201cWe\u2019re hemorrhaging money,\u201d said Catherine Reinheimer, practice manager at the Foot and Ankle Specialty Center in the suburbs of Philadelphia. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":24675,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1154],"tags":[1256,27097,1623],"class_list":["post-24674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-health","tag-hemorrhaging","tag-re"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24674"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24676,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24674\/revisions\/24676"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}