06/14/2024

Doctors Hit by Cyberattack Seek Legal Action Against UnitedHealth

Doctors want the American Medical Association to look into legal actions and ways for physicians to recoup financial losses in the wake of a cyberattack on UnitedHealth Group’s Change Healthcare unit.

The AMA, which later this week begins its annual policy-making house of delegates meeting, has been hearing from some of its more than 200,000 members in the aftermath of the February cyberattack, which triggered a shutdown of parts of Change Healthcare’s electronic system, leaving doctors and other providers of medical care without the ability to get insurance approval of patient services. The attack has triggered chaos for physicians across the country, paralyzing the largest billing and payment system in the U.S.

Now some within the AMA, which is the nation’s largest doctor group, want the organization to take aggressive action, including a possible class action lawsuit, in part because UnitedHealth controls billions of dollars in payments to physicians and also because UnitedHealth’s Optum unit is an employer of physicians. The AMA also has a history of defending and doctor practices against health insurers and their subsidiaries, physicians said.

“Optum is the largest employer of physicians and has acquired practices when the ransomware disruption made those practices unable to survive without acquisition,” a resolution before the AMA’s reference committee on amendments to the group’s constitution and bylaws reads. “Even the practices that survive will have ongoing damages including but not limited to denials related to giving therapy when it was impossible to obtain prior authorization, from using lines of credit and having to pay interest, from having billing departments and others work overtime to submit claims, to losing key employees from inability to make payroll.”

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