In healthcare, technology is key element that which is applied in ensure that data acquisition, patient treatment and even billing procedures are seamless. It can be seen that when a tech behemoth in the domain of healthcare such as Change Healthcare encounters an outage, the impact which follows is rather massive. People using Change Healthcare today are encountering such a problem. This article dives deep into how the outage is affecting Medlytix integrations, the importance of keeping track through the Change Healthcare status page, the collaboration with Health 2047, and answers the question: Is change healthcare still down?
Medlytix and Change Healthcare: What’s Affected by the Outage?
Like many others Medlytix has been relying on Change Healthcare and its facilities for its everyday functioning. Medlytix offers a large amount of information on client-physicians and services that allow healthcare providers to process patient claims, check the eligibility of an individual for payment, and coordinate the revenue cycle to ensure the data is clear and up-to-date. However, with the recent Change Healthcare outage the following key operations have been either slowed down or completely ceased.
Defining revenue cycle management (RCM), it is worth mentioning that all tasks it comprises are highly sensitive to time delays. Any disruption of a system for one minute means that the claims will not be submitt on time, the reimbursement will be delay and ultimately the cash flow of the healthcare providers. This implies that having any form of disruption to the system means that a lot of the providers could severely affect especially given that most currently work under very slim profit margins.
Understanding the status page
More questions are pose in patient data management as well. Doctors and other health care providers require timely access to patient’s records and insurance validation data for adequate patient treatment. As it has been observe, every action is based on the data collect from Medlytix, and if this data cannot be retrieve due to Change Healthcare’s downtime, then the whole system collapses. It becomes even worse in some sensitive cases like when conducting pre-surgery clearance, dealing with emergency or during end of the month reconciliation.
Furthermore, whilst Medlytix is a key user of Change Healthcare’s products, the interruption at Change Healthcare is bringing into question a range of services in the various individuals and providers and platforms. This makes it more essential for the providers to seek other methods of operation incase of long term disruptions. To this effect, Medlytix users must find ways of coping with disruptions in their productivity patterns as they observe Change Healthcare’s recovery process.
How to Monitor change healthcare outage today?
On this note, before any healthcare provider initiates any other action during Change Healthcare outage, the recommended thing to do is to visit Change Healthcare Status Page. To this page, users get the information on how they can receive updates, how the recovery process works, and which systems they are entitle to get the update for.
There is post current information which shed the light on the cause of the outage, which services are affect (eligibility verification, claims submission, payment processing etc. ) and approximate time to restore the services. It also important to understand that outages affect services in different proportions. Some services may be slow and there can actually be services that are unavailable all together.
This is very proactive approach any healthcare provider can take is to sign up for Change Healthcare Status Page notifications. These notifications include real time alerts on service status and changes in the same. Notifications in one’s email inbox or followed on one’s phone can go a long way in aiding IT teams, or administrators make instant decisions on how to readjust the company.
Thus, for the healthcare providers that rely a lot on Change Healthcare, knowing about the status page and visiting it regularly helps to better plan. Some of the ways that it can be utilize include, creating time for making backups, switching to manual mode and or informing patients of some delay. Quite evidently, a well-prepared IT department can go a long way towards determining how effectively a healthcare organisation will be able to handle an outage.
Key Points to Monitor on the Status Page
- Which a particular systems is involve (claims, eligibility etc)
- Recovery time of each service estimated
- Schedules for extension of usual maintenance or when it is done concurrently with the outage
- All the temporary solutions / workarounds possible as suggested by Change Healthcare
Health 2047 and Change Healthcare
Health 2047 is an innovation company working with British Leaders in Healthcare to deliver the solutions of tomorrow. The Health 2047 has been coordinating innovations meant for increasing use of data, revenue cycle and patients’ health alongside Change Healthcare. These initiatives are mean to bring the health care technology into the twenty first century of health information exchange or interoperability.
Therefore, although the current outage is due to a cyber-attack, it is an area that raises many concerns regarding healthcare technology systems’ dependability. That is why as the heath care become more dependent on cloud systems as well as the exchange of data it is necessary to design the infrastructure that would provide sufficient robustness in the face of such failures. It is good to note that outages are occasionally inevitable, however for a company like Change Healthcare to know how to quickly resume service and to reduce the instances where disruptions occur shows the extent of commitment it has to its users.
How the outage affects future innovations?
Consequently, Change Healthcare’s association with Health 2047 type captures the key to future developments, but these developments are predicate upon the idea that the base remains stable. When there is an outage its consequences range from current operations to the development projects that are being work on to transform the healthcare sphere. Some of the risks involve interruptions of Change Healthcare services which may slow down or even pause advancement of new technologies in the network.
Another concern is security. Health 2047 along with Change Healthcare is precondition with the security of data and other related norms such as HIPAA. Blackouts have implications on security because they may expose networks and systems to hackers and social engineering attacks, or lead to the loss of data. To some extent this can be expect in healthcare, because often data security and health information of patients have to be held in priority over technology updates.
Is Change Healthcare Still Down Today?
Currently, up to the latest information, Change Healthcare still experiences and suffers from periodic downtimes. A number of instances of disruption in services are still reporte by some users especially in relation to claims and eligibility Verification. This situation in turn has led to frustration of the healthcare providers concerning the downtime since they require real-time data information in their billing cycles, managing the insurance claims as well as delivering sufficient patient care.
Even as Change Healthcare continues to identify the solution to the problem, it is hard to determine the duration it will take to achieve the complete recovery. It is advise that the healthcare professionals should remain alert and up to date to the Change Healthcare Status Page whereby they would be able to find the most recent development on service availability.
Providers should also provide ‘work arounds’ with respect to processes that are highly important but not immediately essential. Some of these may be things like moving to a process of manual submission of claims or even engaging with other systems for purposes of carrying out eligibility check on patients. As such, there is a need to effectively convey to the patients and clients about the inconveniences that they are likely to encounter in the course of the disruption.
Besides this, there should be contingency strategies for health-care organizations to adopt in case of similar black-outs in future. There is also always the need to ensure that there are contingencies that can handle the operation in an another way, so that should the need arise, then the impact is not too great.
Measures that should be Taken While Awaiting Recovery:
- Just as important, the information on the Change Healthcare Status Page must be consulte to see the current changes.
- Adopt the manual or other forms of checks on the matters relating to claims and eligibility.
- Patients and staff should always be inform in the instance of a change in schedules to ensure one has realistic expectations.
- Plan for future outages and other disruptions of service.
In short
The current Change Healthcare outage is an eye opener to the fact that technology is an indispensable cogent in the health system. Since many platforms such as Medlytix rely on Change Healthcare for revenue cycle management and patient information, this disruption is already being drivers in various healthcare facilities.
This way healthcare providers when they check the Change Healthcare Status Page can be in a position to understand and plan for service recovery. Such partnerships as Change Healthcare and Health 2047 are helpful for predicting healthcare technological progression and its future; nevertheless, stability remains an essential component affecting the success of these technologies.
Today there are still certain services that have not been launch. However, the Change Healthcare team continues its efforts to bring it to a hundred percent. In the meantime, those caregivers responsible for delivering healthcare especially through the digital platform should keep an eye, make preparations and prevent services getting affect.