***Updated Monday, March 4***

A message from Jim Whitfill, MD, SVP, Chief Transformation Officer

Colleagues,

As the cybersecurity event at Change Healthcare, a business unit of Optum that is owned by UnitedHealth Group, continues to evolve, we are consistently monitoring the situation and working to counter its effects on our daily operations throughout the network.

Safe patient care remains our top priority, and we are relentlessly focused on ensuring our patients get access to care they need during this time. As previously shared, there has not been a breach of our systems at HonorHealth, and our financial stability remains strong.

We have returned to electronic prescribing for most pharmacies and services, but you may still notice some delays with insurance verifications, pre-registration for surgeries and hospital stays, and hospital discharges.

Talking points have been created to assist you with patient questions and can be accessed here. Please share with your team members and others who may need to respond to patient inquiries.

We believe that electronic prescribing should return to normal for most pharmacies over the coming week (and will continue to improve over the next few days), but we do not have a definitive timeline of how long the impacts to revenue cycle functions will last. We will continue to monitor the situation, develop multiple contingency plans and provide updates as they become available.

Medical Group providers who are experiencing issues with scheduling or verifying eligibility for patients, please contact Paul Sieckmann, MD.

Providers on Medical Staff who experience issues with scheduling or verifying eligibility, please reach out to your HonorHealth physician relations contact (Veronica Campbell’s team), or Innovation Care Partners Physician Practice Liaisons (Natalie Van Tassel’s team).

Thank you for your continued understanding and patience. For real-time updates, please visit honorhealthphysicians.com.

***Updated Wednesday, Feb. 28***

As the cybersecurity event at Change Healthcare evolves, we are continuing to monitor the situation and are working with Epic and Surescripts to optimize workflows. Starting today at 2 p.m., HonorHealth will return to electronic prescribing for most pharmacies and services.

Please note the following:

For pharmacies NOT impacted by the Change Healthcare cybersecurity incident: 

• ePrescribing will revert to normal workflows. This includes (but is not limited to) CVS, Fry’s, Bashas’, Walmart, Sam’s Club and Walgreens.

For pharmacies impacted by the Change Healthcare cybersecurity event (Albertsons, Safeway, Costco and Jewel-Osco): 

• Non-controlled substance orders will be sent electronically from Epic to Surescripts. Surescripts will eFax prescriptions to the pharmacy. We have a mechanism to receive an error message from any order that fails when faxing from Surescripts to the pharmacy. If an error message is received it will follow standard error queue follow up processes. 
• Controlled substance orders will print from Epic. Providers will be required to select “Print” to complete the order. These prescriptions will require a wet signature with blue or black ink on the printed prescription with a security watermark. Epic has been configured for this specific workflow.

Unfortunately, we still have no insight into how long services will be impacted before we can fully return to our normal electronic prescription processes.

Additional resources:

Patient updates on HonorHealth.com can be found here.

For more information, please see the AHA Cybersecurity Advisory news report and statements by UnitedHealth Group’s Optum unit, which acquired Change Healthcare in 2022.

We want to assure everyone that HonorHealth’s patient care and pharmacy services have not been impacted by these events. We will continue to monitor this situation and provide updates as they become available.