The Biden administration announced sweeping actions on Tuesday from the Department of Health and Human Services to address the continued fallout from the cyberattack on payment processing system Change Healthcare.
“HHS’ first priority is to help coordinate efforts to avoid disruptions to care throughout the health care system,” a press release from the agency said. “This incident is a reminder of the interconnectedness of the domestic health care ecosystem and of the urgency of strengthening cybersecurity resiliency across the ecosystem.”
UnitedHealth Group, owner of the Change Healthcare system that processes health industry payments and prescription tracking, first identified on Feb. 21 that its system had been breached. The system has been inoperable since, leaving many practitioners and hospital networks unable to collect revenue to sustain operations.
HHS announced on Tuesday that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will roll out a variety of flexibility policies to aid providers in changing claims processing and payment clearinghouses. The announcement said that Medicare Administrative Contractors, or MACs, will work more closely with providers to streamline the efficiency of the payment process.
CMS also intends to require Medicare Advantage organizations to “remove or relax” administrative hurdles preventing access to care, such as prior authorization and timely filing requirements during the Change Healthcare outage. The agency is encouraging state-managed Medicaid and CHIP programs to do the same.
Richard Pollack, president of the American Hospital Association, wrote to congressional leadership on Monday urging the federal government to become more involved in mitigating the effects of the crisis.
Pollack contacted congressional leaders after receiving no response from his letter sent directly to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra on Feb. 26.
“We are not on day 13 of this crisis and urgently need your support to help minimize further fallout from this attack,” Pollack wrote to leadership in both parties on Monday. “The urgency of this matter grows by the day.”
Prior to receiving Pollack’s letter, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer sent a request to CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure last week, asking her agency to make advanced payments directly available to the hospitals, pharmacies, and other providers that have been inhibited by the attack.
Schumer also advised Brooks-LaSure to strengthen the role of MACs in mitigating problems, which is the central focus of Tuesday’s announcement from HHS.
Pollack said that the AHA has been in communication with UnitedHealth leadership to resolve the problem for providers but that the company’s “efforts to date have not been able to meaningfully mitigate the impact to our field.”
On March 1, UnitedHealth established the Temporary Funding Assistance Program to bridge the gap in funding until the Change Healthcare system can be restored. Pollack says that the program “is not even a band-aid” to stop the hemorrhaging of cash.
“Every day that core Change Healthcare functionality remains down is a day that providers are not receiving the funds they need to pay doctors and nurses, purchase medical supplies, and keep complex facilities open to provide 24/7 patient care,” Pollack wrote to UnitedHealth COO Dirk McMahon on Monday.
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The American Medical Association has also written to HHS and the CMS asking them to utilize emergency funding authority to providers in order to deliver essential services.
Neither the AHA nor the AMA responded to the Washington Examiner‘s request for comment.
