Unitedhealth brings doctors back with loans that were issued after the Cyber attack changed
Andrew Witty, CEO of Unitedhealth, attested to the Finance Committee of the Senate for Capitol Hill in Washington on May 1, 2024.
Kent Nishimura | Getty pictures
Follows the massive cyber attack Unitedhealth Group Change of healthcare last year, the company initiated a temporary financing aid program to support medical practices in short-term cash flow needs and to offer loans without interest without additional fees.
A little more than a year later, Unitedhealth is aggressively based on borrowers and demands that they “repay their outstanding credit immediately”, said documents that were viewed by CNBC and providers who received funds. Some groups were asked to repay hundreds of thousands of dollars in a few days.
Optum, Freipes, ARM arm from Unitedhealth, the borrowers, tells the borrowers that he reserves the right to “compensate for claims” for the practices, which means that the company will hold back separate funds until the loan repeats.
It is a significant change in attitude for the company that suffered a cyber attack in February 2024, which affected data from around 190 million Americans, the largest that violates US history. The resulting disorder led to severe failures in the entire health system, so that many providers are temporarily unable to be paid for their services. Some immersed in their personal savings to keep their practices alive.
During a hearing of the Senate about the attack in May, Andrew Witty, CEO of Unitedhealth, said providers only have to oblige the loans to repay if “they, not me, but they confirm that their cash flow will be normalized”.
Several doctors who have exploited the financing said CNBC that they cannot meet the company’s new requirements. Dr. Christine Meyer, an internist, who started a practice in Exton, Pennsylvania, received a letter from Optum at the beginning of this month, which asked her to immediately submit the payment of her organization.
“We are not in any position to start repaying this loan,” Meyer, who started her practice about 20 years ago, told CNBC. After the violation, she was a loud critic of Unitedhealth.
“At this point I only look at all of my legal options,” said Meyer. “But the repayment of 750,000 US dollars in five days will obviously not happen.”
Unitedhealth did not comment on certain cases, but a spokesman for Change Healthcare confirmed that the company started repeating the loans.
“Now we have started more than a year after the event and with recovered services, we have started to regain the interest -free funds provided by us to the providers,” said the spokesman in a statement.
The company said that the US Ministry of Health and Human Services followed the same approach “as part of its own cyber attack credit” last year. HHS started a separate program for financing aid as part of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid services last March. CMS said it would automatically receive the payments of Medicare’s claims, and the providers could arouse interest according to a publication.
“We continue to work with providers on the repayment and other options and continue to contact the providers who have not responded to previous calls or e -mail inquiries to receive further information,” said the spokesman for the change in the healthcare system.
The providers were informed that Unitedhealth had reserved the right to withhold future payments when they registered for the financing aid program, the company added. CNBC checked a copy of a credit agreement for the program and confirmed this explanation.
Change Healthcare, which offers tools for payment and sales cycle management, was acquired by optum in 2022.
After Unitedhealth discovered the violation last year, he wasolated and separated the affected systems. The company paid more than $ 9 billion to the providers in 2024, and in January more than $ 4.5 billion was repaid in the fourth quarter. According to Unitedhealth, providers would receive an invoice as soon as the standard payment operations were resumed and that they would be subject to a repayment period of 45 working days.
“Change Healthcare will inform the recipient that the financing amount is due after the processing or payment processing services for claims have been resumed and payments that are affected during the service period are processed,” says the website.
Dwindling deposits, income lost
While the vast majority of Change Healthcare’s services have been restored over the past year, according to the cyber attacks -reaction website of Unitedhealth, three products are still listed as “sub -service”.
And doctors are still tumbling.
Meyer said when the violation took place, she observed how the daily deposits of her exercise of 60,000 to 80,000 US dollars shrink to about $ 150 overnight. She applied for the temporary funding aid program from Optum and received a total of 756,900 US dollars after some difficulties and with the company back and forth with the company.
Former Senator Bob Casey Jr., D-Pa., Meyer’s story met during the hearing of the congress in May. He asked funny about the company’s approach to the repayment process.
“I would like to confirm to you and Dr. Meyer that we do not intend to ask the repayment of loans until she realizes that your business is normal again,” Witty told the legislators. “Even then, after 45 working days – 60 calendar days – we would search for repayment and there would be no interest and no fee associated with this loan.”
“So it would be a determination that she hits?” Asked Casey.
“It’s absolutely right,” said Witty.
Meyer said that is not what happened.
The headquarters of the Unitedhealth Group Inc. is in Minnetonka, Minnesota, USA
Mike Bradley | Bloomberg | Getty pictures
On January 24, she received a message from Optum, which was viewed by CNBC, in which the repayment was requested, since “the service disorder for most customers has ended”. Meyer said she called and told the company that she was “not paying in any position”.
Meyer claims that due to the change Healthcare cyber attack, her practice has lost more than 1 million US dollars of income. She announced CNBC that the number was based on a forensic financial analysis that had carried out her practice by comparing her fees with payments in recent years. The number of 1.2 million US dollars is loss of all insurers, not only for Unitedhealthcare, said Meyer.
On April 1, Meyer received another message in which an immediate repayment was requested within five working days. The letter was sent to Meyer. However, the name of the practice on the letter, the Insight advice and the total amount due from 925,200 US dollars was wrong.
Meyer said she called Optum again and the company made a mistake, but she had five days to repay her actual total number of $ 750,000. At this point, the company would hold back its Unitedhealthcare payments, which it called “Shakedown”.
Meyer said her practice usually receives annual damage payments from around 150,000 to 200,000 US dollars from Unitedhealthcare.
“I think I will only take her back for the next three years until you get your money back,” she told CNBC.
In a contribution about LinkedIn on Thursday, Meyer wrote that she and her team have made a plan to leave the slightest amount of money in the account to receive payments from Unitedhealthcare. If it is not there, you cannot get it. “
“Very frustrating experience”
Dr. Purvi Parikh, allergy sufferer and immunologist with a private practice in New York, told a similar story.
Parikh’s practice received around 440,000 US dollars in financing aid after the violation. She said she started receiving repayment at the end of last year and that optum threatens to compensate for claims that are to be paid to the practice.
“We were already very hard from the change Healthcare Hack,” said Parikh in an interview. “Now ask back all of this money or you will hold future payments ransom. It was only a very frustrating experience with optum.”
In January, Parikh’s practice called for an extension by one-month conclusion of $ 101,650 to try to prevent Unitedhealth from holding back other payments. Parikh’s colleague wrote in the E -Mail request: “It was quite difficult to recover financially.”
Optum granted Parikh’s practice.
“People don’t just have this amount of money that just sitting around,” said Parikh. “We paid everything back, but it wasn’t without difficulty.”
On Friday, the American Medical Association sent a letter to optum in which the company asked not to use a “uniform size” approach to repayment of loans. The AMA also asked Optum to honor its commitment to decide when the repayment process should begin.
“Every practice will have a different level of patient volume, income production and cost pressure and requires a repayment plan that does not create the same direct financial streaks that are experienced during the cyber attack when the CHC systems were not functional,” wrote AMA CEO, CEO from AMA.
A doctor who runs a pediatric practice in New Jersey said that Unitedhealth has already started to withhold payments from the organization. After the violation of the health care of changes, the practice received more than 500,000 US dollars in financing aid.
The doctor, who must not be mentioned due to the sensitive nature of the situation, said the practice had started to receive telephone calls and e -mails from Optum in order to ask for repayments from the end of last year. The group stated that it did not have the money, but had set up a payment plan and had started the process.
However, the doctor said that his invoice department had determined that Unitedhealth had already started to withhold damage payments. In his explanation of the services in which an insurer describes, there is a line with the inscription: “The amount to be paid in this declaration was used to repay amounts that were due to Change Healthcare Operations, LLC.”
REGARD: Department of Health and Human Services opens the Hack examination at Unitedhealth’s Change Healthcare
