A U.S. healthcare IT power player, Change Healthcare, announced Thursday that an outside cybersecurity threat has forced the company to disconnect systems, causing worldwide outages that the company said might linger.
Change has been owned by insurer UnitedHealth Group since it was merged with healthcare services company Optum in 2022. “At this time, we believe the issue is specific to Change Healthcare and all other systems across UnitedHealth Group are operational,” read a system update notice Thursday morning on Optum’s site.
The incident began Wednesday morning, with system update trackers noting “connectivity issues” before later confirming it was in fact a cybersecurity issue. Since the incident, reports nationwide have hit social media, with patients expressing frustrations getting needed medication refills and local providers posting their own notices.
“Due to a nationwide outage from the largest prescription processor in North America, we are currently unable to process prescriptions at any of our four locations,” wrote Michigan-based provider Scheurer Health on their Facebook page Thursday morning. By midday, Scheurer said it was “back up and running,” though HealthExec was still seeing an error message on Change Healthcare’s account login pages.
Change Healthcare’s technology helps process 15 billion patient payments annually and is associated with one-third of all U.S. patient records, according to the company. UnitedHealth Group’s deal to merge Optum and Change in 2022 was valued at nearly $8 billion.
Evan joined TriMed in 2011, writing primarily for Health Imaging. Prior to diving into medical journalism, Evan worked for the Nine Network of Public Media in St. Louis. He also has worked in public relations and education. Evan studied journalism at the University of Missouri, with an emphasis on broadcast media.