Christopher Snowbeck reports on how the Change Healthcare attack has affected one clinic in Minnesota. His report provides a good illustration of the issues raised by a recent AMA survey of some physicians, reported here previously. From his reporting:
Twin Cities Counseling says it hasn’t been able to submit payment claims for more than 100 appointments — resulting in thousands of dollars in missing reimbursements — since UnitedHealth Group took down the claims processing system at its Change Healthcare division to contain the IT threat.
Because of the billing mess, Twin Cities Counseling couldn’t cover its payroll in March, the lawsuit says. Additionally, recently hired therapy providers at the clinic haven’t been able to transition their patients to the practice.
The complaint, which was filed Wednesday as a class action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for Minnesota, says the Change Healthcare outage has meant that many health care providers across the country have lost their primary, and in some cases their only, system for obtaining payments from health insurers.
“Twin Cities Counseling LLC can no longer verify prospective clients’ insurance benefits,” states the lawsuit, which only names Change Healthcare as a defendant. “Without access to the Change platform, plaintiff has no way of knowing if a referrals’s insurance is active, what the plan’s copayment and deductible amounts are, or even whether the clinic’s providers are in network for the plan.
Read more at StarTribune.