London: The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) UnitedHealth Group To notify people whose data was exposed during the hack Changes in healthcare unit in February, The Wall Street Journal This information was given on Wednesday.

This decision has affected American hospitals and health care providers According to the report, this task is time consuming and expensive.

For months, hospitals and other care providers have been urging HHS to shift the burden of notification to other hospitals. UnitedHealth and its unit, because providers lack the funds and knowledge to do so.

The report said HHS agreed on May 31, making an exception to the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which generally obliges providers to notify victims. The company, HHS and Senate Finance Committee There was no response to a Reuters request for comment.

UnitedHealth said it was still investigating what data was breached by the hackers, the WSJ reported, citing the company’s response to questions from the Senate Finance Committee.

The company also warned that the leaked data could contain sensitive information such as names, addresses, medical codes and insurance numbers, the report said.

Earlier in May, the healthcare group’s CEO Andrew Witty told a congressional committee that hackers had stolen data on possibly up to a third of Americans in a cyberattack that caused disruptions to US healthcare. Medical Claims Processing Which the company is still trying to fix.

Its Change Healthcare unit, which handles healthcare billing, data systems and a variety of other services, is connected to nearly one in three patient records in the U.S., and the cyberattack disrupted the entire country’s healthcare system, interrupting payments to doctors and nurses. health care facilities For a month. (Reporting by Sriparna Roy in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika Shyamnath)