Legal Lessons from the Change Healthcare Data Breach - HBMA Store

Legal Lessons from the Change Healthcare Data Breach
Presented by Mark Cunningham

As presented at HBMA's 2024 Fall Conference September 17th-19th, 2024.

Description: 
In early 2024, the United States healthcare system was significantly disrupted because of cyberattack on one of the country's largest clearinghouses, Change Healthcare. The cyberattack resulted in the cessation of Change's clearinghouse operations and disrupted services throughout the United States' healthcare infrastructure, including the revenue cycle industry. 
 
This presentation will focus on the fundamental problems caused by the Change event, including an overview of the operational disruptions and the legal consequences, with a specific focus on its impact to the revenue cycle management (RCM) industry.  Due to the cyberattack, parties throughout the healthcare industry have grappled with privacy issues, client disputes, allegations of default and struggles to perform services at historical levels. 
 
We will analyze the primary legal issues implicated in the event, address steps that need to be taken by RCM to the billing companies to manage future potential risks, and review specific contractual provisions that need to be considered both within client and third-party vendor contracts.

We will also address exposed weaknesses within the clearinghouse framework and discuss whether the healthcare industry can modify existing claim processes or require more interoperability to avoid similar catastrophic situations in the future.
 
The hope is that an attendee will be able to mitigate its existing risk profile and gain tactics to better protect itself from either future cyberattacks and/or allegations of non-performance that are outside of their control.

Learning Objectives
Course participants will be able to:

1. Understand the legal consequences associated with and potential fallout from the cyberattack on Change Healthcare 
2. Learn risk mitigation steps to better protect a billing company       
3. Be presented with contractual provisions/options designed to deal with potential future disruptions in the industry