TONAWANDA, N.Y. — Last week an apparent cyberattack incident seemingly flew under the radar. But it had a major impact on those who need prescription medicine to maintain their health.
Pharmacists at the Brighton-Eggert Pharmacy in Tonawanda were hard at work Monday filling various medical prescription orders. Much of that is done through a sophisticated online processing system called a switch which connects doctors and health insurance company prescription managers.
But they are actually on an alternative backup system because of what happened last week. Pharmacist and owner Don Arthur says " We get an approval and with that approval comes the label which we provide to the patient on their vial and they go home. That connection abruptly stopped on Wednesday afternoon "
He adds "We're talking about acute illnesses, antibiotics, pain medications, post-surgery, even our diabetics and hypertensive patients cannot be out of these medications. "
It's hard to determine the exact link between their specific connection problem for prescriptions. But the same day a large pharmacy benefit management firm called Change Healthcare, which is owned by the major health insurance firm United Health Group, was hit by a cyberattack that the company linked to a state sponsored group - meaning hackers from another country.
On its website, Change Healthcare states that it handles 15 Billion healthcare transactions each year with ties to a third of U.S. patient records.
Brighton Eggert pharmacists were able to go to an alternative system through a separate software provider on Thursday. Arthur says " We were able to get all of those prescriptions processed to call our patients to have them quickly come in and receive their medications. But we were fortunate not all pharmacy independent pharmacies throughout the country, grocery store chain pharmacies have that flexibility with the backup switch."
Now Don Arthur hopes for government review and oversight of this situation. "What we're seeing here is that these companies have been allowed to grow and grow and creating tremendous amounts of profit "
He goes on to say "If they're the only option in a healthcare space that critically relies on communication, and they go down again are they set up to have an alternate system in place? In this case? Absolutely. As large as they are, they have not "
The American Hospital Association is warning member hospitals to carefully monitor their systems so this cyberattack does not spread to them.
