Pharmacies across the country are facing delays in the wake of a cyberattack against the healthcare tech giant Change Healthcare, a leading prescription processor, which said it was “experiencing a network interruption related to a cyber security issue” on Wednesday.
“Once we became aware of the outside threat, in the interest of protecting our partners and patients, we took immediate action to disconnect our systems to prevent further impact,” Change Healthcare announced.
“At this time, we believe the issue is specific to Change Healthcare and all other systems across UnitedHealth Group are operational,” the tech company added. “The disruption is expected to last at least through the day.”
Change Healthcare, one of the largest healthcare technology companies in the United States that handles orders and patient payments throughout the country, did not disclose the specific nature of the cyberattack.
Pharmacies, meanwhile, have experienced outages due to the incident, according to a report by the Huron Daily Tribune.
Scheurer Health, a healthcare provider in Michigan, for example, said it was unable to process prescriptions at any of its family pharmacy locations.
A medical group in McConnell Air Force Base in Kansas, meanwhile, said Wednesday, “We are experiencing a temporary pharmacy outage,” adding, “We understand the inconvenience this may cause and appreciate your patience as we work diligently to resolve the issue.”
“Our team is working to restore complete pharmacy services as soon as possible,” 22nd Medical Group added. “The estimated date for resolving this issue will be tomorrow or later. We will continue to monitor the situation and provide updates on our progress.”
“Due to an unexpected enterprise-wide MHS GENESIS downtime, the 22d Medical Group Pharmacy cannot process new prescriptions. However, our Pharmacy remains open and will continue to dispense already-completed prescriptions,” the medical group added in a follow-up post on Thursday.
The Michigan-based Canadian Lakes Pharmacy also announced Wednesday that it “the issue that has been going yesterday and starting today that is affecting MOST pharmacies.”
“There is a nationwide outage from some of the largest prescription processors in North America,” Canadian Lakes Pharmacy said.
“We CAN receive your RX but MOST insurance plans we cannot bill to your insurance company. If you can wait a day or so to pick up your RX that would be great,” the pharmacy added.
“Thank you for your understanding, patience and continued support,” the pharmacy concluded. “Unfortunately this is completely out of our control and like I said affecting MOST pharmacies.”
The issue is expected to last until Friday, but at the time of publishing, Change Healthcare has not yet provided a timeline for when it will return to its original service.
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