The Change Healthcare clearinghouse has experienced sustained outages since February due to cyber attacks. This clearinghouse deals with medical claims for about 900,000 physicians in the United States, illustrating how detrimental these attacks can be. Clearinghouses are platforms that allow data transfer between providers and payers. This is how healthcare providers get paid. The most recent attack affected the largest processor of prescription medication, impacting pharmacies across the U.S. healthcare system. Change Healthcare alone handles 15 billion healthcare transactions annually. That equates to 1 in 3 U.S. patient records. The sheer number of records that are affected by cyber attacks is enough to take action on this issue and work towards a viable remedy across clearinghouses.
The Need for Redundancy
The inability to submit medical claims can result in the aging of millions of dollars in transactions that cannot be paid and fulfilled. This creates a financial gap and further financial challenges until systems are stabilized. In order to combat the negative impacts of these cyberattacks, it is important to establish payer connection redundancy. This involves establishing communications with multiple clearinghouses to promote decentralization. Redundant payer systems will spread the processing and keeping of information across several platforms. This creates a backup plan in case larger clearinghouses fall victim to attacks. This way, they are able to fall back on other systems that are running smoothly even if the main system needs stabilization.
Conclusion
There are many things to consider when taking the next step towards protecting information from cyber attacks. Most importantly, choosing the right system is the first step to ensuring redundancy within payer systems. To establish decentralized communications, it is imperative to work with multiple clearinghouses. Remaining operational during outages is much more attainable using this method. These methods will guarantee that payer requests go through even if any single clearinghouse has any kind of outage.
Source: Orbit Healthcare
