The federal government is stepping in to help Maryland doctors, therapists and other healthcare providers in the state as they are seeing their cash reserves dwindle after a cyber attack on Change Healthcare hamstrung insurance payment processing.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services says it will offer emergency funding to healthcare providers across the country after some providers said they cannot meet payroll or other administrative payments.
“All Optum has done, who owns Change Healthcare, is offer a really bad 10-day loan payment program as their solution,” said Gene Ransome, the CEO of the Maryland State Medical Society. “I don't understand why more people aren't screaming and yelling. This is a major risk to our whole health care system.”
The emergency funding will provide upfront payments to providers and suppliers.
It’s been more than two weeks since Change Healthcare announced its systems were compromised by hackers.
Change Healthcare processes 15 billion transactions a year and is one of the largest payment processors in the nation.
“I think it calls attention to this unhealthy vertical alignment that we're seeing in the healthcare industry,” Ransom said. “There is so much vertical integration and concentration of power with these healthcare entities, that it's bad because it not only stifles competition, but when something like this happens, it really sends shockwaves through the entire economic healthcare system, and creates mayhem for us. These problems are not just here in Maryland, they're national.”
Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra sent a letter to Change Healthcare yesterday urging them to take more responsibility for the cash flow issues.
“While we believe payers have a unique responsibility and opportunity to address the challenge before us, we urge action on the part of any health care entity that can step up,” Becerra wrote. “This incident is a reminder of the interconnectedness of the domestic health care ecosystem and of the urgency of strengthening cybersecurity resiliency across the ecosystem.”
The Maryland Insurance Administration released a consumer advisory last 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 impact of the hack on state providers.
“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.”
