Change Healthcare hack by ‘nation-state’ disrupts pharmacies, patients

A cyberattack blamed on a “nation-state” is wreaking havoc with prescriptions on Long Island and nationwide, leading to some insurance authorizations not going through and some customers being told to wait for refills until the problem is resolved.

Pharmacies that rely exclusively on Change Healthcare to process insurance claims are reeling, said Heather Ferrarese, board chair of the Pharmacists Society of the State of New York.

“For some pharmacies, it’s been completely devastating to their business the past few days,” said Ferrarese, co-owner of Bartle’s Pharmacy in upstate Oxford.

Change, a subsidiary of the giant Minnesota-based UnitedHealth Group, first publicized the problem early Wednesday morning, and since Thursday has been periodically posting messages through fellow UnitedHealth subsidiary Optum that described a “cyber security issue” that “our experts are working to address.”

UnitedHealth said in a filing Thursday with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it “cannot estimate the duration or extent of the disruption at this time.”

Optum, with which Change merged in 2022, declined Friday to comment on a timeline.

It’s unclear how many prescriptions are impacted by the outage.

At New Island Pharmacy in Deer Park, about 10% to 20% of customers are affected by the breach, said owner and pharmacist Nidhin Mohan.

Mohan said his pharmacy has two servers that connect insurance companies with his computer system, and with the Change server down, he is using one run by competitor RelayHealth. The problems are with customers whose insurance companies or plans don’t work with Relay, he said.

When he cannot connect with the insurance companies of long-term customers, Mohan asks the customer to wait until the problem is resolved. But for those who can’t wait, he accepts the patient’s copay, which he determines from previous transactions. After Change’s systems are back online, he will seek reimbursement for the rest of the drug cost from insurance companies.

“I’m hoping that once everything is settled, I can run it through and get my money back,” he said.

“If you are using a private pharmacy, if you’re using a small mom-and-pop, this works, but if…