Senior Biden administration officials recently pressed the CEO of healthcare giant UnitedHealth Group and other healthcare firms to do more to get vital payments flowing to healthcare providers three weeks after a cyberattack crippled those payment systems, according to sources.
The meeting featured Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, senior White House officials, and Andrew Witty, the CEO of UnitedHealth Group, whose subsidiary Change Healthcare was hit by a cyberattack last month, the sources said.
The US officials urged Witty and other healthcare executives in the room to take more steps to get emergency funding flowing to cash-strapped health practices, some of which have told CNN that they are running out of money because of the cyberattack and that they could be forced to close. Change Healthcare processes about 15 billion transactions annually and serves thousands of hospitals, insurers and pharmacies nationwide. The ransomware attack prevented some insurance payments on prescription drugs from processing, leaving many care providers footing the bill up front and hoping to get reimbursed.
Some healthcare providers have lost more than $100 million per day because of the outage, one industry analyst previously told the media. A White House National Security Council spokesperson had no immediate comment.
Change Healthcare announced plans last week to have its electronic payment platform back online by March 15 and its network for submitting claims restored the following week. But the financial wreckage caused by the cyberattack will take a lot longer to clean up, health providers and analysts say.
