US healthcare giant UnitedHealth Group announced that its subsidiary Optum suffered a cyberattack by “Nation-state” hackers on the Change Healthcare platform, forcing the company to shut down IT systems and various services.
Its subsidiary, Optum Solutions, operates the Change Healthcare platform, which is the largest payment exchange platform between doctors, pharmacies, healthcare providers, and patients in the US healthcare system.
Optum is providing regular updates on the status of its services on this portal, which says that the outage is currently impacting 119 Change Healthcare and Optum services and platforms.
Change Healthcare has a wide presence in the US healthcare systems, used by hospitals, clinics, and pharmacies nationwide for electronic health record systems, payment processing, care coordination, and data analytics.
Employees at healthcare clinics, medical billing companies, and pharmacies have reported widescale problems due to the outage, including being unable to bill or send claims for prescriptions or healthcare services.
The US military’s healthcare provider for active-duty personnel, Tricare, has also been impacted, announcing that the Optum outage has forced all US military pharmacies worldwide to fill prescriptions manually.
