Patients struggle to get medication after cyberattack on Change Healthcare
After a cyberattack on Change Healthcare, patients are struggling to access and afford essential medication. Outages persist in systems used for medical billing and insurance claims.
Desperate patients around the country have been forced to choose between paying out of pocket for essential medications or forgoing them entirely as the aftermath of a cyberattack on a major health care company stretches into its third week.
Change Healthcare, a little-known but critical subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, detected the attack on Feb. 21. Since then, pharmacies, doctors offices and patients say their lives and work have been upended by widespread outages in systems commonly used for medical billing and insurance claims.
Disruptions to copay assistance and coupon card processing at pharmacies, in particular, have highlighted key vulnerabilities in a system on which people’s lives depend.
Ronda Miller, 54, said she and her husband rely on a discount card to afford his insulin — he has Type 2 diabetes and congestive heart failure. But when she tried to pick up his medication at her pharmacy in Deadwood, South Dakota, on Feb. 22, the card could not be processed. Without it, the medications would cost hundreds of dollars.
“When you are diabetic, whether it’s Type 1 or Type 2, without insulin they’re going to die,” Miller said.
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