Marlene Nathanson, right, with her husband, was abruptly refused a request to cover further treatment from her Medicare Advantage plan as she recovered from a stroke. “She has to leave our facility by Friday,” a therapist told her.
For two weeks at the 140-hospital system, doctors and nurses have had little access to digital records for patient histories, resorting to paper and faxes to treat people.
Ascension, one of the nation’s largest medical systems with 140 hospitals in 19 states, has yet to recover from a large-scale cyberattack earlier this month.
Several lawmakers questioned whether the company had become so large — with tentacles in every aspect of the nation’s medical care — that the effects of the hack were outsize.
Andrew Witty, the chief executive of UnitedHealth Group, acknowledged before the Senate Finance Committee that hackers had found a weakness in its cybersecurity that forced the shutdown of a vast billing and payments system.
Login
