(Reuters) – U.S. health insurer UnitedHealth Group (NYSE:) said on Wednesday it has so far provided more than $3.3 billion to health care providers affected by last month’s cyberattack on the Change Healthcare (NASDAQ:) benefits system.
UnitedHealth said it paid out more than 40% of that amount to so-called safety-net hospitals and federally qualified health centers that serve high-risk patients and communities.
Change Healthcare is an insurance claims system that processes about 50% of medical claims for approximately 900,000 physicians, 33,000 pharmacies, 5,500 hospitals and 600 laboratories.
On February 21, it was attacked by a hacker group calling itself “ALPHV,” also known as “BlackCat,” causing cash shortages for small health care providers and outages that could take months for the largest U.S. health insurer to recover. fully recover.
The Department of Health and Human Services is investigating whether there was a breach of protected health information. The State Department offered up to $10 million for information about the hacking group.