Margaret Parsons, one of three dermatologists at a 20-person practice in Sacramento, California, is in a bind.
Since a Feb. 21 cyberattack on a previously obscure medical payment processing company, Change Healthcare, Parsons said, she and her colleagues haven’t been able to electronically bill for their services.
She heard Noridian Healthcare Solutions, California’s Medicare payment processor, was not accepting paper claims as of earlier this week, she said. And paper claims can take 3-6 months to result in payment anyway, she estimated.
“We will be in trouble in very short order, and are very stressed,” she said in an interview with KFF Health News.
A California Medical Association spokesperson said March 7 that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services had agreed in a meeting to encourage payment processors like Noridian to accept paper claims. A Noridian spokesperson referred questions to CMS.
The American Hospital Association calls the suspected ransomware attack on Change Healthcare, a unit of insurance giant UnitedHealth Group’s Optum division, “the most significant and consequential incident of its kind against the U.S. health care system in history.” While doctors’ practices, hospital systems, and pharmacies struggle to find workarounds, the attack is exposing the health system’s broad vulnerability to hackers, as well as shortcomings in the Biden administration’s response.
To date, government has relied on more voluntary standards to protect the health care system’s networks, Beau Woods, a co-founder of the cyber advocacy group I Am The Cavalry, said. But …
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Margaret Parsons, one of three dermatologists at a 20-person practice in Sacramento, California, is in a bind.
Since a Feb. 21 cyberattack on a previously obscure medical payment processing company, Change Healthcare, Parsons said, she and her colleagues haven’t been able to electronically bill for their services.
She heard Noridian Healthcare Solutions, California’s Medicare payment processor, was not accepting paper claims as of earlier this week, she said. And paper claims can take 3-6 months to result in payment anyway, she estimated.
“We will be in trouble in very short order, and are very stressed,” she said in an interview with KFF Health News.
A California Medical Association spokesperson said March 7 that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services had agreed in a meeting to encourage payment processors like Noridian to accept paper claims. A Noridian spokesperson referred questions to CMS.
The American Hospital Association calls the suspected ransomware attack on Change Healthcare, a unit of insurance giant UnitedHealth Group’s Optum division, “the most significant and consequential incident of its kind against the U.S. health care system in history.” While doctors’ practices, hospital systems, and pharmacies struggle to find workarounds, the attack is exposing the health system’s broad vulnerability to hackers, as well as shortcomings in the Biden administration’s response.
To date, government has relied on more voluntary standards to protect the health care system’s networks, Beau Woods, a co-founder of the cyber advocacy group I Am The Cavalry, said. But …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]