Home Forums Discussions General Discussion PHARMACIES NATIONWIDE CANNOT FUNCTION

Change Healthcare was hit by a ransomware attack and is completely down at least through the end of the day. The company, owned by United Healthcare, is integral to most pharmacies.

https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/21/change-healthcare-cyberattack/

ALSO, those of us that use Availity (Now Change Healthcare) for clearing house cannot bill. I have been unsuccessful so far to get any guidance from my vendor on downtime measures, repair time. Not important of course, as we are all in this just for the fun!

I don't understand these big companies. Who do they hire for their cybersecurity? I have an idea:

Either use your backups if you have them or pay the ransom.

I wouldn't have thought this would affect the ability to e prescribe at the physician level, but some of the prescriptions I normally send are suddenly not eligible for e prescribing. Not sure if this is a coincidence of not.

Oh wait, Availity has arranged an alternate way to bill and provided an instruction manual in the form of a 145 page PDF file on how to do it.

"Thank the Maker!"
- C3PO

Jon,

Optum was knocked out as well, so was that the intended mail order pharmacy for those meds? Maybe that is the issue.

No it was to a local Rite Aid. I faxed the prescription - maybe just a one time glitch.

One of the local independent pharmacies and I believe chains couldn't fill Rx due to not being able to connect to insurance about coverage and copays. Supposedly a "nation state" bad actor did it. I wonder if that means no ransom was demanded.

Change healthcare still down. Cannot submit bills or get ERA's. It is a sadness.

My understanding is that Change is down but Carertraker has been able to reroute the process and billing can now be done.

Many of our prescriptions cannot be sent electronically currently - lots of faxing.

Haven't had too many problems here with escrips. Hopefully that doesn't change.

For clarification, Caretracker is my billing software and PM. It is also a Harris program that works fairly well with AC.

Chris, I am really unclear how all this works and fits together. I write two prescriptions for a patient and one codifies and goes by erx. The other will not and has to be faxed (and this is a medication I erx all the time).

Go figure.

I have not had that problem., at least not yet.......

Blackcat is the perp behind the Change ransomware attack which United Healthcare may go on for weeks.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/29/blackcat-claims-responsibility-for-cyberattack-at-unitedhealth.html is a good summary.
One of the issues coming up for us are the coupons to bring expensive meds down on copays are also not working. My grandson is a pharmacist for Walgreens and lots of Rx can't be filled because of how the cash price of many drugs exceeds $1,000.