Local pharmacy feeling impact of nationwide cyberattack

By Jenna Wilson

Pharmacies across the nation and in St. Joseph are working to fill essential medications after a cyberattack last Wednesday disrupted data transmission lines between insurance companies and pharmacies.

The cybersecurity attack that took place on a major health tech platform, Change Healthcare, has complicated the process of billing through insurance companies, and local pharmacies are feeling the impact.

JulieMarie Nickelson, a registered pharmacist at Roger’s Pharmacy, said when the cyber issue first happened, they experienced nearly 500 claims a day not going through for patients.

“It’s improved since last Wednesday, but it’s definitely not resolved yet,” Nickelson said. There are many coupons that aren’t working; we have insurances where some claims are going through, but not others. So, we’re kind of at the mercy of what we call a ‘switch program,’ which is basically the intermediary between the pharmacy and the insurance company.”

Roger’s said Change Healthcare has informed the pharmacy, as well as other pharmacies across the nation, that nothing was gained from the breach and there are no signs of patients’ personal data being compromised.

However, they are still dealing with the aftermath, and pharmacists say they’re now seeing around 50 insurance claims a day not going through, which is still a significant amount.

There aren’t many alternative options for patients dealing with insurance problems besides offering a cash price or the 340b drug pricing program — depending on the patient’s provider.

“It’s a frustrating situation,” Nickelson said. “We want to be taking care of our patients and we want you to get your medicine at an affordable price. That’s why we’re part of the 340b program. Unfortunately, when it gets to the point where it’s an extremely expensive medication, we can try and run it, however we can, but we don’t know if we’re going to be able to go back and fix it or if they’re going to honor retroactive claims or not.

“Worse comes to worse, sometimes we’re having to reach out to providers to see if we might be able to come up with a more cost-effective alternative just for the meantime,” she added.

The cause of the cyberattack is still under investigation. The service outage was expected to end last week, but officials have not given an update.

“We really don’t get any more updates than anyone else,” Nickelson said. “We’ve gotten a statement each day saying, ‘It’ll be through by the end of the day,’ at least, but we’ve gotten that message each day so far. We’re really hoping that they’re able to get everything squared away and safe again so that we can start using the system normally again.”