Military pharmacies back to normal following cyberattack

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 .