Key U.S. Healthcare Payment Vendor Hacked and Paralyzed, Numerous Pharmacies Nationwide Unable to Process Prescriptions

The business outage at Change Healthcare, a US healthcare IT platform, continues to fester, with its parent company Optum saying that some services may remain disconnected and that the behavior patch is seen as a way to circumvent ongoing cyberattacks as well as remediation efforts. Mandiant, Google's cybersecurity arm, is currently involved in the incident response. As the platform is a key payment exchange for the U.S. healthcare system, the parties have responded to the incident by saying that patients had to pay for prescription drugs because the system was unavailable, and some experts have commented that the cybersecurity incident highlights the risks of placing a conglomerate at the heart of a healthcare service center.