Some New York City pharmacies are still struggling to fill all of their customers’ prescriptions more than a week after a cyberattack crippled a technology used by health care providers and insurers.
Following the attack, some patients have faced difficult decisions about whether to pick up their medications as pharmacies struggle to confirm that their prescriptions will be covered by insurance, two pharmacy owners said. If the medications are not covered by insurance, pharmacies either have to cover the cost or bill their patients.
In recent days, many pharmacies have transitioned to alternatives to the affected technology platform, but some are still facing billing issues, according to the Pharmacists Society of the State of New York. In some cases, pharmacies are dispensing medications without knowing whether their businesses will get reimbursed.
It’s still unclear whether, and to what extent, patient data has been compromised. The state Department of Health is monitoring the situation and Medicaid does not appear to have been affected, spokesperson Erin Clary said.
Change Healthcare, the company that operates the system that was compromised, is a division of the firm Optum, which is owned by UnitedHealth Group. Doctors use Change’s platform to send patients’ prescriptions to their pharmacies, which in turn use it to check patients’ insurance information and bill their insurers. The platform is also used to process manufacturer coupons, which provide discounts on expensive drugs.
The platform is widely used throughout the industry and serves as “the internet for pharmacies,” according to Danny Dang, owner of Esco, a pharmacy in Hell’s Kitchen.
“Imagine that all of a sudden the internet was disconnected,” Dang said Friday. “So, we’re operating in the dark.”
Esco is one of the 70,000 pharmacies across the U.S. that have had to find alternative ways to process prescriptions since Optum first announced that Change Healthcare was having…
Read the full article here
Leave a Reply