2024-03-20
AHA Survey: Change Healthcare Ransomware Impact
According to a survey from the American Hospital Association (AHA), 94 percent of hospitals say they are experiencing financial impacts from the Change Healthcare ransomware attack; more than half deem the impact “significant or serious.” The survey includes responses from 1,000 hospitals. Nearly three-quarters of those responding said the incident had a direct impact on patient care. Hospitals say that while they are implementing workarounds, they are expensive and time-consuming.
Editor's Note
The attack is being felt nationwide. HHS has issued $2.5 billion in advance Medicaid and Medicare action payments, which providers will need to reconcile later, so providers can continue to operate. HHS is insisting insurance companies do the same for providers. The good news is that Change Healthcare is paying 95% of their insurance health insurance claims. Here is a clear example of third-party provider outage risk. Make sure you are capturing the risk of service interruptions from your third parties and options, if any, mitigate them, note you may need to accept more than you think.
![Lee Neely](https://images.contentstack.io/v3/assets/blt36c2e63521272fdc/blt287a7a830c1223e8/60285112efec26565b3dc240/Lee-Neely-headshot-768x1024.png)
Lee Neely
The cyberattack on Change Healthcare continues to highlight 1) the dependency on 3rd party service providers; 2) the unintended consequences of vendor consolidation; and 3) its impact on healthcare operations. For one and three internal workarounds can be established. Unfortunately, to reduce vendor consolidation (via merger and acquisition), the government will have to weigh in.
![Curtis Dukes](https://images.contentstack.io/v3/assets/blt36c2e63521272fdc/blt2a96d77f89dabfce/6179106bc05249199df194eb/CD_CISO.jpg)