Pharmacy information company hack has impact on Western Pa. pharmacies, chains

A cyberattack disrupted operations at a pharmacy information company beginning about two weeks ago, impacting a number of pharmacies around the country.

UnitedHealth subsidiary Change Healthcare first reported on its website Feb. 21 that it is “experiencing a cyber security issue.” In updates Friday, the company said it was still experiencing some operational issues.

Change Healthcare connects pharmacies with insurance companies to process claims and confirm coverage of medications.

“Once we became aware of the outside threat, and in the interest of protecting our partners and patients, we took immediate action to disconnect Change Healthcare’s systems to prevent further impact,” the company said in its original announcement. “This action was taken so our customers and partners do not need to.”

The announcement elaborated that Change Healthcare had “a high level of confidence” that Optum, UnitedHealthcare and UnitedHealth Group systems were not impacted. A spokesperson said the companies were working with Mandiant, a cybersecurity firm, to address and monitor the issue.

“We are working on multiple approaches to restore the impacted environment and will not take any shortcuts or take any additional risk as we bring our systems back online,” the most updated version of the announcement said Monday. “We will continue to be proactive and aggressive with all our systems, and if we suspect any issue with the system, we will immediately take action and disconnect.”

Spokespersons for CVS, Rite Aid, Walgreens and Giant Eagle said the attack had minimal impact.

“Only a small percentage of Rite Aid claims were impacted by the outage,” Rite Aid spokesperson Catherine Carter said. “We successfully processed many of those claims through another billing mechanism without interrupting patient care.”

“Giant Eagle pharmacy operations have not been significantly impacted by the recent UnitedHealth breach, and we are able to meet the prescription needs of our guests,” said spokesperson Jannah Jablonowski.

“Our pharmacy operations, and the vast majority of prescriptions, are not being impacted by this third-party issue,” Walgreens spokesperson Marty Maloney said. “For the small percentage that may be affected, we have procedures in place so that we can continue to process and fill these prescriptions with minimal delay or interruption.”

“We’re continuing to fill prescriptions in our pharmacies but in a small number of cases we are not able to process insurance claims, which our business continuity plan is addressing to ensure patients continue to have access to their prescriptions,” said CVS spokeswoman Shelly Bendit.

Local pharmacies impacted slightly

At locally owned pharmacies, some noticed disruptions, but by this past Monday, many of the issues had been resolved.

Peter Maida, co-owner and pharmacist at Norvelt Pharmacy in Mt. Pleasant, said the pharmacy was unable to process 60% to 75% of its claims Feb. 20-21, but the issue had cleared up by midday Feb. 22.

“Without the switch (through Change Healthcare), I cannot communicate with the provider, I can’t communicate with the insurance company,” Maida said. “Basically, communications electronically between pharmacies that use Change and the insurance company were impossible for a day and a half.”

The pharmacy had to ask people with non-urgent prescriptions to come back later, and provided medications on a limited basis to people who needed them immediately, he said.

At Town & Country pharmacy in New Kensington, pharmacist Nicholas Roperti said the computer system that allows the pharmacy to look up insurance was impacted, but none of their customers used insurance that would be directly halted by the outage.

“We do not have any patients that have the health care system that is down, so we are still able to bill for all of our patients for their medication,” he said. “The only thing really that’s been affecting us is that we’ve had to ask people to either read their information over the phone or bring it in. Sometimes, it’s just easier to have them bring it in.”

Shawn Soles, pharmacist at Hayden’s Pharmacy in Mt. Pleasant, Youngwood and Donegal, said Hayden’s was not impacted.

“For the most part, we use a different processor, so it really hasn’t affected us any,” he said.