Vermont’s Medicaid prescription claims system remains down and could still be weeks away from fully coming back online, according to the Department of Vermont Health Access.
Change Healthcare, which operates the largest claims processing system in the country, experienced a cyberattack on Feb. 23, leading to the widespread shutdown of software that pharmacies and care providers across the country use.
In Vermont, which contracts with Change Healthcare to run the state’s Medicaid prescription claims system, pharmacies and primary care providers have been left scrambling to circumvent the downed software. Roughly 200,000 Vermonters receive health insurance through Medicaid.
UnitedHealth Group, which owns Change Healthcare, announced in a March 7 press release that it had restored key parts of its pharmacy services system and expects to begin phasing in the remainder of the downed software this week. According to the company’s timeline, the system could be fully operational next week.
In Vermont, however, the health access department said that the Medicaid claims processing system could still be weeks away from getting fully back online.
“In the absence of any further information we don’t want to make any firm promises on Vermont Medicaid,” said Alex McCracken, the department’s director of communications, in a meeting with legislators on Monday. “We are waiting for additional information to base our own estimates off of.”
In the meantime, the department has begun to remit weekly payments to pharmacies across the state roughly equal to the amount of money they receive in Medicaid claims during an average week, he said.
“We expect that at the end of this, when the billing system does come back up and we’re able to process these claims that way, that we’ll have a period of squaring that off, finding the balance between what we’ve remitted to the pharmacies and what they actually provided,” said McCracken.
McCracken said that the department has also been hosting weekly information sessions with pharmacies to help troubleshoot questions caused by the outage.
There has been no indication from Change Healthcare that the hack compromised any sensitive data of Vermonters, he said.
Earlier this month, Wired reported that a Bitcoin wallet address apparently connected to those responsible for the cyberattack received $22 million in cryptocurrency, stoking speculation that Change Healthcare had paid the hackers ransom money to end the system shutdown. The company declined to confirm whether they issued the payment, according to Wired.
Asked about the payment, McCracken said that he had “no information” and noted, “that would be something that Change Healthcare would be navigating, not the State of Vermont.”
