(Reuters) – U.S. insurer UnitedHealth Group said on Wednesday it has provided more than $3.3 billion in aid to health care providers affected by last month’s cyberattack on its claims system Change Healthcare. It was announced that.
UnitedHealth said it paid more than 40% of that total to so-called safety-net hospitals and federally qualified health centers that serve high-risk patients and communities.
Change Healthcare is a claims generation and settlement system that processes approximately 50% of medical claims for approximately 900,000 physicians, 33,000 pharmacies, 5,500 hospitals, and 600 laboratories.
The company was attacked on February 21 by a group of hackers calling itself “ALPHV” (also known as “BlackCat”), leaving small healthcare providers with a cash crunch and the largest U.S. health insurer fully recovering. It has caused confusion that could take months to resolve.
The Department of Health and Human Services is investigating whether there was a breach of protected health data. The State Department announced it would offer up to $10 million for information about the hacker group.
(Reporting by Chandni Shah in Bengaluru; Editing by Subransh Sahu and Christopher Cushing)
