US healthcare technology giant Change Healthcare has confirmed a cyber attack on its systems. “We are experiencing network interruptions related to cybersecurity issues,” the company said in a brief statement.
“After becoming aware of the external threat, to protect our partners and patients, we took immediate action to disconnect our systems to prevent further impact,” Change Healthcare wrote on its status page. ing. “Disruption is expected to continue at least throughout the day.”
The incident began early Tuesday morning on the East Coast of the United States, according to case tracking authorities.
The specific details of the cybersecurity incident have not been disclosed. As of press time, TechCrunch found that most of Change Healthcare's login pages were inaccessible or offline.
The Huron Daily Tribune, a local newspaper in Michigan, reports that a Change Healthcare cyberattack has crippled local pharmacies.
Michigan health care provider Scheurer Health, referring to Change Healthcare on its Facebook page, said it is currently unable to process prescriptions through patients' insurance due to a “nationwide outage at North America's largest prescription processing company.” He said he couldn't do it.
Change Healthcare is one of the largest healthcare technology companies in the United States. Change Healthcare processes patient payments across the U.S. healthcare system. The tech giant says on its website that it processes 15 billion medical transactions annually, and that one in three U.S. patient records has been “touched by our clinical connectivity solutions.” I'm proud of that.
In 2022, health insurance giant UnitedHealth Group completes the merger of U.S. healthcare giant Optum and Change Healthcare in a $7.8 billion deal, giving Optum extensive access to patient records for tens of millions of Americans. Now accessible.
Optum provides technology and data to insurance companies and healthcare services.
Optum and Change Healthcare are both owned by health insurance giant UnitedHealth Group. An Optum spokesperson did not comment when contacted by TechCrunch. Spokespeople for Change Healthcare and UnitedHealth Group did not respond to requests for comment.
Do you work at Change Healthcare and want to know more about cyberattacks? Contact us on Signal and WhatsApp at +1 646-755-8849 or email zack.whittaker@techcrunch.com. You can also send files and documents via SecureDrop.
