Change Healthcare by Changing Change Healthcare
Colleagues:
New York City-based NYC Health + Hospitals has made the switch from Change Healthcare to Experian because of the cyberattack on the claims processing vendor. Change turned many of its IT systems offline following the Feb. 21 hack, and that left many hospitals and physician practices unable to do automated eligibility checks on patients, send claims, or receive remittances.
Between April 1 and April 16, NYC Health + Hospitals sent out 400,000 claims to catch up on all the backlog. Except for dental claims, they are now live and caught up with payments. The health system plans to go live with Experian’s real-time eligibility and remittance platforms June 1. However, their backlogged remittance files are not live yet, and those payments are yet to be posted to the patient accounting system. The health system has also been experiencing higher-than-usual rates of claims denials from having real-time eligibility offline.
If you have a physician private practice, now is a suitable time to determine whether your practice has been made whole by Change Healthcare the same way that the Hospitals have been treated. If not, then you may want to reassess your business relationship with your claims processing vendors and with those insurance companies that choose such claims processor vendors for you.
MSSNY continues to work with the AMA and numerous other allies to advocate to state and federal agencies and policymakers that the various relief mechanisms from this cyber incident are reaching community physician practices.
All the best,
Jerome C. Cohen, MD
MSSNY President
