Friday, February 23, 2024

Tens of thousands of pharmacies across America unable to get prescriptions to patients after major cyberattack


Tens of thousands of pharmacies across America unable to get prescriptions to patients after major cyberattack by 'foreign nation' - a day after cellphone services went down



A cyberattack on America's biggest health insurer has left pharmacies unable to fill prescriptions across the country.

UnitedHealth said tens of thousands of pharmacies were impacted by the hack it suspects was a state-sponsored attack.

The hack began on Wednesday, preventing several pharmacies from processing prescriptions to insurance companies.

It is unclear how many patients are affected but UnitedHealth serves about 7.7 million customers nationwide.

The incident coincided with a nationwide cell outage at AT&T Thursday, which left more than 70,000 customers without cell service.

There is no evidence that the two events are related, but the FBI and Homeland Security is investigating the latter.

UnitedHealth said Thursday that its Change Healthcare unit, which processes prescriptions to pharmacies across the country, was compromised by a 'suspected nation-state associated cyber security threat actor.' 

Several prescription providers announced that they were impacted by the hack.

CVS Health, which has more than 9,000 pharmacies, said that the hack meant that, 'in certain cases' it was unable to process insurance claims.

'We're committed to ensuring access to care as we navigate through this interruption,' the company's statement said. A spokesman for the chain did not immediately provide further details. 

Walgreens, which serves nine million customers, said a 'small percentage' of its prescriptions 'may be affected,' but that the company had safeguards in place to process and fill them 'with minimal delay or interruption.' 


The company said it had no additional information to share about the incident.

Publix Super Markets didn't immediately respond to a request for comment, but on social media some users complained of issues when trying to fill their prescriptions.

'This is a nationwide disruption,' Publix said in a response to one user on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Other companies including GoodRX and BlueCross BlueShield of Montana also flagged potential disruptions on social media. 





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