UnitedHealth Group’s CEO said Tuesday that his team was “over-optimistic” about the pace at which providers would reconnect with Change Healthcare after the claims-processing unit sustained a sweeping cyberattack.
Andrew Witty’s comments came toward the end of the company’s second-quarter earnings call, in which UnitedHealth disclosed it now expects to shoulder an up to $1.9 billion post-tax hit from the mid-February cyberattack, higher than the $1.6 billion estimate it had shared when it announced first-quarter earnings. Most of that is from doling out loans to providers while they were unable to submit claims and mailing notifications to affected patients.
“I think in all honesty, we were a little optimistic in hindsight at the pace at which we thought people would come back in terms of flow through the system once it was reconnected,” Witty told analysts.
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