Physicians are urging Health and Human Services to tap emergency funds to help practices survive a cyberattack that’s straining the profession.
Monday marked the 12th day providers have had to go without revenue due to disruptions at billing vendor Change Healthcare, the American Medical Association said March 4. This has placed an “enormous administrative burden” on medical groups, which have had to devise workarounds to submit claims, verify patient eligibility or obtain prior authorization.
“We are particularly concerned about small, safety net, rural and other less-resourced practices that often serve underserved patient communities,” AMA Chief Executive Officer James L. Madara, MD, wrote in a March 1 letter to the head of Health and Human Services. “We urge HHS to utilize any available emergency funds and authorities to provide critical financial resources to physicians, ensuring they can continue to deliver essential healthcare services during these challenging times.”
The Change outage is costing providers over $100 million daily, according to one estimate, “posing severe financial challenges for medical practices already strained for liquidity,” the AMA said. Along with monetary relief, physicians are urging HHS to issue guidance documents on “appropriate next steps” amid the shutdown. Madara and colleagues are additionally asking the feds to implement “enforcement discretion where available.”
“The department should also continue to facilitate all channels of communication from Change Healthcare to the healthcare community so that physician practices can stay up to date on the latest developments,” he wrote.
Change Healthcare is part of Optum, a division of UnitedHealth Group. The firm offers revenue cycle services, along with PACS and other solutions in radiology. It’s unclear how widely the attack is impacting the specialty. The American College of Radiology declined to comment Monday, while the Radiology Business Management Association said it has received reports of impacted imaging groups that rely on Change Healthcare for billing. Many others also use the vendor as a clearinghouse for insurance submissions, RBMA Executive Director Bob Still told Radiology Business.
“There’s a lot of scrambling among our members,” he said. “We are encouraged by the announcement that Change has a mechanism to provide temporary funding assistance,” Still added.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.