Change Healthcare: Apocalypse Now!

The unbelievable train wreck that is the change healthcare cyber breach, illustrated.

Change healthcare. It's a company. In theory. Or at least it was. Now, it's probably the worst liability I can imagine when it comes to cyber security and a flood of incoming lawsuits.

You can follow along and see how Optum — the healthcare services subdivision of United Healthcare—is doing and bringing services back online. I'm warning you, unfortunately, it's not good or reassuring. It's also completely public. This link, which you navigate to on United Healthcare’s Optum page—with a section theoretically for chief information security officers—is available to anyone in the public. I'm not kidding. Take a look. I will add black cats and commentary for flair. I created this illustrated guide on the evening of Tuesday, the 5th of March.

It's also remarkable. This vast array of services gives us a sense of the scale of Change Healthcare, its role inside Optum, and all of our lives.

Oh my God, that looks like a lot of problems with information systems! It's just the beginning.

Let's start with what's going well…

The number of services elaboration, as of this time Tuesday night, only gets worse from here:.:

Moving on, much of dentistry is impacted.

It turns out that SSI/SSD looks like they may be handled through healthcare systems as well…

Everything related to the medical network is also offline.

Oh my gosh,

I warn you, this just keeps going, there are so many services, and so many of them are impacted!

Some of the pharmacy services are now up again:

This section even had a surprising guest appearance!

Provider communications have similarly taken a hit…

There are just so many services… credentialing is going to slow down!

And revenue cycle, poor revenue cycle, so many services, none… working.

And for the health tech set…no APIs…no bueno.

It's such a variety of services, that it almost boggles the mind.

Thanks for joining me for this tour, let's hope these services become functional in the future, and we think about how important our Information technology services are the next time somebody asks us for our password!

Prior coverage is available here. and here. and here. and here. and here. and here. and also here. Oh, and with an NFT, here.