Change Healthcare Requests Consolidation of Breach Lawsuits

After several lawsuits have been filed against UnitedHealth Group, Optum, Inc., and Change Healthcare, Change Healthcare requests cases to be heard in the Nashville federal court.

According to a report by Reuter's Mike Scarcella, Change Healthcare asked a U.S. court panel to designate Nashville, Tennessee, as the place to consolidate at least 24 class action suits, as this is where the company is headquartered. Change Healthcare indicated that this would "prevent duplicative discovery and inconsistent pretrial rulings, and to conserve the resources of the parties and the courts."

Meanwhile, the aftermath of the Feb. 21 ransomware attack on Change Healthcare is still unfolding, with the full extent of the damage to providers and patients being assessed weeks after the event. On April 1, Jennifer Gregory of Security Intelligence highlighted that the cyberattack's most harmful aspect is the ripple effect from Change to providers to patients.

Emily Olsen and Susanna Vogel wrote for CyberScurity Dive on March 5 that some “practices have struggled to check insurance eligibility – compromising their ability to see new patients – or submit prior authorization requests.”

According to Change Healthcare’s incident tracker, the restoration of their products and services was still in progress as of March 31.

This is a developing story. Healthcare Innovation will continue to update its readers on ongoing developments.