UnitedHealth Group continues scrambling to recover from the February cyberattack on its Change Healthcare unit. These big businesses will soon enough emerge from the crisis embarrassed but undiminished. But what about the people taking the brunt of the hit? The providers limping by on loans. The patients emptying their pockets at pharmacy counters. And wondering if their personal info could be in the hands of criminals for years to come.

Having advanced more than $3.3 billion to providers, UnitedHealth seems to be doing its best for all affected. But for some, even generous credit extensions may not be enough. Clearly, one major problem has been widespread overreliance on Change Healthcare. Never again should one healthcare technology supplier become too big to flail.—Dave Pearson

The White House held a roundtable discussion on lowering healthcare costs last week. Fortune magazine followed up with one of the panelists, business mogul and Cost Plus Drugs cofounder Mark Cuban.

Bringing inexperienced clinicians up to speed on real-world patient care is now the No. 1 safety issue troubling healthcare providers. 

Feeling overwhelmed by your work? There’s a lot of that going around these days. Some call it burnout. But there’s another side to the story.

“ALPHV/BlackCat and their affiliates haven’t attacked Change Healthcare. This time, they’ve attacked our families.”

‘I have all kinds of nightmare scenarios playing out in my head, like how am I going to pay my bills?’

“Given the unprecedented magnitude of this cyberattack, and in the best interest of patients and health care providers, OCR is initiating an investigation into this incident,” states a “Dear Colleague” letter from OCR director Melanie Fontes Rainer.

Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights wants to know whether hackers captured sensitive patient information during the breach. 
 

Medicare Advantage covers a disproportionate share of disadvantaged senior citizens compared with traditional fee-for-service Medicare, yet the former bests the latter on some key outcomes metrics.

In the absence of federal laws to address violence against healthcare workers, most state legislatures have taken up the cause on their own.