The Department of Health and Human Services is responding to pleas from the AMA and others for regulatory flexibility to help ease the major disruptions in claims processing and payment linked to the cyber outage at UnitedHealth Group subsidiary Change Healthcare. While the AMA appreciates the flexibilities that HHS and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced, the administration needs to go further to provide relief for physicians.

“Many physician practices operate on thin margins, and we are especially concerned about the impact on small and/or rural practices, as well as those that care for the underserved,” said AMA President Jesse M. Ehrenfeld, MD, MPH. “The AMA urges federal officials to go above and beyond what has been put in place and include financial assistance such as advanced payments for physicians.”

The cybersecurity-linked outage is costing the health care industry an estimated $100 million a day.

My latest for the AMA. The whole shebang.