Fallout from a ransomware attack on the country’s largest health care payment processor is “the most serious incident of its kind leveled against a U.S. health care organization,” American Hospital Association CEO Rick Pollack said Thursday evening. The attack has crippled Change Healthcare, a company that provides a widely used program for health care providers to manage customer payments and insurance claims.
In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for Change Healthcare’s parent company, UnitedHealth Group, indicated that thousands of pharmacies are using “offline processing workarounds.” More than 90% of the more than 70,000 U.S. pharmacies that use Change Healthcare’s payment processor are using alternate ways to process payments, the spokesperson said. UnitedHealth Group announced on its website that it discovered the attack Feb.