The Change Healthcare clearinghouse recently experienced an outage. This outage resulted from a cyber attack, which impacted the largest processor of prescription medication. This processor handles billing for more than 67,000 pharmacies in the United States, so any problems that occur in this processor can have big impacts.
In order to reduce the risk of future outages, clearinghouses should focus on building payer connection redundancy. Decentralization creates backup systems, which can keep the whole system running, even if one clearinghouse faces a cyber attack or outage.
Creating a decentralized and redundant payer system requires that many clearinghouses communicate with each other. Orbit Healthcare is a company that helps in establishing this communication. Using modern architecture and high scalability, Orbit Healthcare can connect multiple clearinghouses, ensuring that payer requests go through even if one clearinghouse sustains an outage.
Outages can cripple a clearinghouse and result in delayed payments and financial challenges. Finding ways to combat outages and cyber attacks is necessary to protect healthcare information, and redundancy is an important part of the solution.
Infographic Source: https://orbithc.com/change-healthcare-cyber-attack-redundant-payer-systems.html