Several weeks after a major cyberattack, Change Healthcare’s platform remains offline, and the federal government, as well as leading healthcare organizations, now have taken steps to aid affected providers.
The Department of Health and Human Services is granting some flexibilities for Medicare providers; the agency released a statement regarding the situation on Tuesday.
“HHS’ first priority is to help coordinate efforts to avoid disruptions to care throughout the healthcare system,” HHS spokespersons said. “This incident is a reminder of the interconnectedness of the domestic healthcare ecosystem and of the urgency of strengthening cybersecurity resiliency across the ecosystem.”
The new rule adjustments include:
- Expediting the process by which Medicare providers can change to a new claims processing system
- Relaxing certain rules about prior authorization or claims filing for the duration of the outage
- Encouraging Medicare Advantage plans to offer advance funding for providers
- Accepting of paper claims by Medicare administrative contractors from providers instead of electronic billing
For affected providers, LeadingAge also released some tools and guidance this week to address the crisis, including on-demand training for members.
LeadingAge also told members that it will coordinate issues on their behalf with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
The American Hospital Association described the cyberattack, which took place Feb. 21, as “the most significant and consequential incident of its kind against the US healthcare system in history.”
The AHA was among several leading healthcare associations, including the American Health Care Association / National Center for Assisted Living and LeadingAge, that have urged the government to take action over the past few weeks.
It is expected that the Change Healthcare outage will take up to a month to resolve, the McKnight’s Tech Daily reported Monday.
