Change Healthcare, a major U.S. healthcare technology firm, has confirmed a cyberattack causing network disruptions. In response, the company proactively disconnected its systems to contain the breach, anticipating at least a day-long service interruption. The nature of the incident remains undisclosed, but it has led to widespread inaccessibility of Change Healthcare’s services, affecting local pharmacies’ ability to process insurance-based prescriptions. The company, which processes 15 billion healthcare transactions annually, was acquired by UnitedHealth Group in a $7.8 billion deal, merging with Optum to manage extensive patient data. Neither Optum nor UnitedHealth Group has commented on the incident.
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“Once we became aware of the outside threat, in the interest of protecting our partners and patients, we took immediate action to disconnect our systems to prevent further impact,” Change Healthcare wrote on its status page.
Most of the login pages for Change Healthcare were inaccessible or offline when TechCrunch checked at the time of writing.
Scheurer Health, a healthcare provider in Michigan, said on its Facebook page that it cannot currently process prescriptions through patients’ insurance, citing the “nationwide outage from the largest prescription processor in North America,” referring to Change Healthcare.
The tech giant boasts on its website that it handles 15 billion healthcare transactions annually and that one-in-three U.S. patient records are “touched by our clinical connectivity solutions.”
In 2022, health insurance giant UnitedHealth Group completed its merger of U.S. healthcare services giant Optum and Change Healthcare in a $7.8 billion deal, which allowed Optum broad access to patient records on tens of millions of Americans.
Both Optum and Change Healthcare are owned by health insurance giant UnitedHealth Group.
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