Military pharmacies back to normal following cyberattack

 PHARMCOVER
In February, a reported cyberattack on the nation’s largest commercial prescription processor impacted military clinics and hospitals worldwide, as well as some retail pharmacies. In response, the 59th Medical Wing's Pharmacy team at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland implemented emergency plans to continue serving patients and provide medical support to the United States Air Force's basic training mission. Ultimately, the pharmacy never stopped providing medical care, dispensing over 70,000 prescriptions during the outage. Photo credit U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Melody Bordeaux

Military pharmacies have now returned to normal operations following a cyberattack in February on the nation’s largest commercial prescription processor, Change Healthcare (CHC).

CHC disconnected its systems due to a breach in its network on Feb. 21. The outage temporarily prevented affected military pharmacies and some retail pharmacies nationally from processing claims and filling prescriptions.

Military pharmacies shifted to using offline processes to ensure prescriptions were filled safely according to a TRICARE release.

The connection to CHC was restored earlier this month and military pharmacies are now able to process claims through Express Scripts, the TRICARE pharmacy contractor.

“Our priority was to ensure that beneficiaries could access medications during this time. We’re proud of our team’s hard work to fill prescriptions. And we’re happy to resume routine operations now,” said Edward Norton, Jr., Pharmacy Operations Division chief at the Defense Health Agency.

Reach Julia LeDoux at Julia@connectingvets.com.

Featured Image Photo Credit: U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Melody Bordeaux