Cyberattack Causes Nationwide Outage for Change Healthcare, The Largest Prescription Processor in North America
Change Healthcare, a prominent figure in US healthcare technology, found itself grappling with a significant cyberattack on Wednesday, leading to widespread disruptions across its network.
Initial disclosures this week unveiled the unsettling news, as the company revealed the unavailability of several key applications. As the day progressed, Change Healthcare updated stakeholders on the situation, citing enterprise-wide connectivity issues stemming from the cyber incident. The impact spanned over 100 vital applications, spanning crucial sectors such as dental, pharmacy, medical records, and patient engagement, among others.
"Change Healthcare is experiencing a network interruption related to a cybersecurity issue, and our security experts are actively addressing the matter. The disruption is anticipated to persist at least throughout the day," the company communicated six hours later.
Later in the day, Change Healthcare divulged that the disruption was triggered by an external threat, prompting the company to take preemptive measures by disconnecting affected systems to contain the incident. Although specifics regarding the cyberattack remained undisclosed, speculations pointed towards ransomware, considering the typical response of isolating impacted systems from the network.
The ramifications of the disruption reverberated through the healthcare ecosystem, given Change Healthcare's pivotal role as a key player in the industry. Following its merger with Optum in 2022, the company solidified its position as one of the largest healthcare technology entities in the US, responsible for handling payment processes for healthcare providers and payers nationwide. Moreover, Change Healthcare is the largest perscription processor in North America, which made matters worse for a number of pharmacies not being able to process prescriptions.
With access to the medical records of roughly one-third of US patients and managing billions of healthcare transactions annually, the impact of the disruption was profound. Reports emerged of pharmacies struggling to process prescriptions, exemplified by Scheurer Family Pharmacy's announcement of being unable to process prescriptions due to the nationwide outage.
The incident serves as a stark reminder of the vulnerabilities within critical healthcare infrastructure and underscores the imperative to bolster cybersecurity measures to safeguard essential services and patient data from evolving threats.