entertainment

The outage caused by the Change Healthcare cyberattack could last weeks, a top UnitedHealth executive suggested in a Tuesday conference call with hospital cybersecurity officers, according to a recording obtained by STAT.

UnitedHealth Group Chief Operating Officer Dirk McMahon said the company is setting up a loan program to help providers who can’t submit insurance claims while Change is offline. He said that program will last “for the next couple of weeks as this continues to go on.”

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That timeline, while vague, still provides more clarity than UnitedHealth has offered publicly since the outage began Feb. 21. Change’s website said until Thursday that the outage would last “through the day.”

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