Redundancy in payer gateway connections has become essential in the healthcare industry, particularly in light of the recent Change Healthcare hack. The outage that began in February 2024 demonstrated the risk of relying solely on one clearinghouse to process medical claims. Change Healthcare handled a sizable portion of US medical claims, so the impact was serious and affected not only pharmacies nationwide but also medical professionals.
So what precisely is a clearinghouse, and why is it relevant? Essentially, it serves as a channel for the interchange of essential data required to carry out payments between healthcare providers and payers. The incident served as a timely reminder of the importance of decentralization and redundancy in communication infrastructure. By connecting to several clearinghouses built on modern, scalable architecture, healthcare systems can lower their risk of suffering financial losses from payments being delayed as a result of clearinghouse outages.
The most crucial lesson is pretty obvious: in order to defend against ransomware attacks and other cyber threats, healthcare facilities must prioritize being ready by setting up several payment processing systems. Orbit Healthcare, for instance, offers a solution that ensures payer needs are met even in the case of an outage by connecting to multiple clearinghouses. In the future, implementing such policies will be essential to safeguarding the healthcare sector against financial shocks and maintaining operational continuity.
Source: Orbit Healthcare