London: The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) agreed to allow UnitedHealth Group to notify people whose data was exposed during a hack into their Change health care unit in February, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.
The decision would save American hospitals and health service providers According to the report, an expensive and time-consuming job.
For months, hospitals and other care providers have urged HHS to shift the reporting burden to UnitedHealth and your unit, since providers lack the money and information to do so.
HHS agreed on May 31, making an exception to the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which generally requires the provider to notify victims, according to the report. The company, HHS and the Senate Finance Committee He did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.
UnitedHealth said it was still conducting an investigation into what data was breached by the hackers, the WSJ reported, citing the company’s responses to questions from the Senate Finance Committee.
The company also warned that the leaked data could contain sensitive information such as names, addresses, medical codes and insurance numbers, according to the report.
In early May, the healthcare conglomerate’s CEO, Andrew Witty, told a congressional committee that hackers potentially stole a third of Americans’ data in the cyberattack that caused disruptions in process medical claims which the company is still trying to fix.
Its Change Healthcare unit, which handles healthcare billing, data systems and many other services, is involved in about one in three patient records in the U.S., and the cyberattack disrupted the healthcare system of across the country, stopping payments to doctors and Medical centers for a month. (Reporting by Sriparna Roy in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika Syamnath)
