OAN’s James Meyers
2:13 PM – Thursday, February 22, 2024
Pharmacies across the country are reporting delays of prescription orders due to a massive cyberattack against one of the country’s largest healthcare companies.
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Change Healthcare, a company handling orders and patient payments throughout the U.S., announced they noticed the first “cyber security issue” affecting its networks Wednesday morning on the East Coast.
“Change Healthcare is experiencing a network interruption related to a cyber security issue and our experts are working to address the matter. 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 said in a statement.
Other pharmacies across America have also put out announcements that the attack on Change Healthcare is disrupting their ability to process patients’ orders.
“We are experiencing a temporary pharmacy outage at the 22nd Medical Group. 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,” reads a post from 22nd Medical Group, a medical center based around McConnell Air Force Base in Kansas.
“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.”
Additionally, there is currently no publicly available report on the nature nor origin of the cyber security issue ruining Change Healthcare.
“There is a nationwide outage from some of the largest prescription processors in North America,” Michigan-based Canadian Lakes Pharmacy wrote Wednesday on social media.
“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. If you need it today we can do our best to accommodate individual needs.”
Knight’s Pharmacy in Berea, Kentucky, wrote, “As of this morning, we are still unable to process prescriptions to insurance due to the cyberattack on Change Healthcare.”
“Unfortunately this is a national outage and beyond our control. We hope that the situation will be resolved soon,” Knight’s Pharmacy said. “We will be working to fill our backlog of prescriptions as quickly as possible as soon as the system is available. We have not been given an estimated timeframe for restoration of service. Thank you for your patience.”
“We are aware that Change Healthcare is experiencing a network interruption that is impacting certain business operations, as well as the operations of other companies nationally,” the spokesperson said. “There is no indication that CVS Health’s systems have been compromised.”
Furthermore, in California, Naval Hospital Camp Pendleton said “all Camp Pendleton and associated pharmacies are unable to process any prescription claims.”
“We are only able to assist patients with emergency and urgent prescriptions from hospital providers at this time,” the hospital posted.
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