Over the last week, patients at pharmacies around Alaska have had to pay for prescriptions with cash or encountered other delays as pharmacies struggle to process claims.
A cyberattack at a Lower 48 health care technology company is causing havoc at pharmacies across Alaska, which have struggled for over a week to receive electronic prescriptions and process insurance payment claims as a result of the attack.
Seignemartin said she had heard from pharmacies around the state, saying their insurance claims processing software was “completely down” for over a week, forcing patients to pay cash upfront for prescriptions or receive their medications “on loan” from pharmacies that would try to run their insurance claims once the systems were back up.
“It’s been quite a workload week — we had to go back and redo prescriptions and rebill prescriptions,” she said. “It’s kind of quadrupled the work, really.”had not been resolved by Friday afternoon, most but not all pharmacies around Alaska had been able to find software workarounds to the issues, said Seignemartin. She said she anticipated few disruptions to patient care going forward.
“I have lots of pharmacy friends around the state who have been scrambling, though,” he wrote in a Friday email. “Some are still dead in the water. Others have been able to sign emergency contracts” with other health care companies, he said.
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