Help us advocate for you. Share how the cyber outage has affected your practice.

Change Healthcare Cybersecurity Attack and Outage

The Feb. 21 cyberattack on Change Healthcare continues to have a widespread negative impact on patients and practices. UnitedHealth Group is regularly sharing updated information on restoration timelines and resources.

Since the attack and outage, the AAFP continues to closely monitor the situation and has:

Reached out to UnitedHealth Group and urged them to minimize disruptions to physicians, practices and patients and provide financial assistance.
Shared the family physician perspective on the attack and its potential fallout with Congress and the White House.
Continued working to ensure that disruptions to claims submission, payment processes and other Change Healthcare products do not hamper care delivery.

Jump to a section: Latest updates | Get funding assistance | Share your experience

Latest updates

From UnitedHealth Group

The Change Healthcare Cyber Response page has FAQs, updates, and features that allow you to:

Subscribe to get alerts for specific product updates
Apply for funding assistance
View a product restoration timeline

From the AAFP

An FPM Getting Paid blog entry on the outage is being updated as further information about the outage and response becomes available. Links included in the blog entry are also provided below.

Addtionally, the AAFP sent a letter to the Energy and Commerce Committee outlining the impact on family physicians as Congress considers future legislative efforts.

Get funding assistance

Optum's Temporary Funding Assistance Program

Follow these steps to potentially access temporary funding provided by Optum Financial Services:

Step 1. Determine your eligibility for funding assistance to help bridge the gap in your short-term cash flow.
Step 2. After confirming eligibility, you can accept funds by logging into your Optum Pay account.
- Funds must be accepted each week.
- If you do not have an Optum Pay account, you must create one.
Step 3. If funds received are insufficient, submit a request for more through Optum's temporary assistance inquiry form.

For answers to common questions about funding assistance, visit Optum's webpage for the program.

HHS and CMS Announcements

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is maintaining a list of information about private payers to help you connect with them for support and more.

CMS announced an advanced payment program for those affected by the outage:

FPM's Getting Paid blog entry on CMS' announcements summarizes the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) reporting relief available to physicians.