UnitedHealth Group's first-quarter earnings report could offer a window into the financial impact of the February cyberattack on its Change Healthcare subsidiary.
The data breach at the Change Healthcare unit forced the firm to take down its massive billing and payment processing service. While the company has restored services for pharmacies, the outage has continued to disrupt operations for health care providers across the country. "We will be very interested in the charge that they're going to be incurring ... in terms of how they're estimating either lost revenue or additional expenses," said Scott Fidel, managing director and health care analyst at Stephens.to providers, though the American Medical Association says more than half of physician groups surveyed in early April said they'd had to use personal loans to maintain operations.
With the Change outage taking place mid-way through the first quarter, it has likely made it more difficult for insurers to track medical utilization costs in real time. JPMorgan's Gill expects most will report adjusted or estimated numbers.