Maryland officials, providers, insurance plans and other healthcare institutions are still trying to figure out the scope and impact of the United Healthcare Group cyber attack that disrupted payment processing operations on Feb. 21.
Healthcare organizations around the world are still seeing impacts from the attack in the form of not being able to send payments to insurance plans or conduct remittances.
The Maryland Insurance Administration released a consumer advisory Friday stating that people who believe they are being improperly required to pay for services or medications in their health insurance should first contact their plans.
If the plans are unable to resolve the problem, residents can then file a complaint with the state.
The Maryland Hospital Association says it is still assessing the issue.
“This is a national issue and we’ve connected with the American Hospital Association to understand how quickly it can be resolved,” said Amy Goodwin, the vice president of communications at the Maryland Hospital Association. “We are still working to understand the full scope of the impact on our hospitals. If the ransomware threat continues, we’ll begin working with the state and regulators to determine how to support hospitals.”
Johns Hopkins Health Plans says it is seeing “downstream” impacts from the attack.
“Johns Hopkins Health Plans is unable to receive 837 electronic claim files submitted through Optum/Change Healthcare currently. We are also unable to send 835 remits,” the plan’s website states.
Meanwhile, the University of Maryland Medical System says it is taking measures to minimize the impacts of the attack.
“When we learned of the cyberattack on Change Healthcare, we immediately and proactively severed our connection to its network, and there is no indication that our systems have been compromised. Our clinical operations remain unaffected,” said Dr. Joel Klein, senior vice president and chief information officer for UMMS.
“UMMS is a large organization and our robust financial processes and contingency planning have allowed us to manage business operations through this challenge. Our teams continue to address the outage without disruptions to care, and are working with a very small number of affected patients on a case-by-case basis to find alternative solutions to ensure their prescriptions get filled. Other procedural changes include Patient Access Teams working with patients to manually confirm copays, submit notices of admission and otherwise check insurance eligibility as needed.”
The United Health Group is one of the three largest businesses that process services to insurance companies.
The attack, which was carried out by nation-state affiliated hackers, is impacting medical organizations all over the world.
