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US health insurance giant UnitedHealth Group said Tuesday in its first-quarter operations earnings report that a cyberattack on its subsidiary Change Healthcare cost the company $872 million.

UnitedHealth Group Reports Significant Financial Losses From Change Healthcare Cyberattack

Change Healthcare provides patient billing across the US healthcare system. It performs billions of healthcare transactions annually and claims to manage the data of almost one-third of all US patients, or about 100 million people.

The February 21 cyberattack on Change Healthcare has reportedly crippled pharmacies and hospitals' operations across the US for over a week. The incident has proved costly to UnitedHealth Group.

The $872 million figure does not include the cyberattack direct response costs, which means that any sum that UnitedHealth may have given to the hackers as ransom is not included. However, it includes the "disruption impacts" in the Change Healthcare business.

According to UnitedHealth, the hackers responsible for the cyberattack were identified as a Russia-based ransomware gang, ALPHV or BlackCat, who claimed responsibility for the attack, claiming the group stole more than six terabytes of data, including "sensitive" medical records.

Even though UnitedHealth lost $872 million in the first quarter due to the cyberattack, the company still beat first-quarter expectations.

According to CBS News, UnitedHealth announced $99.8 billion in revenue and a per-share profit of $6.91 during the first quarter of 2024, beating the FactSet analysts' forecast of $99.2 billion in revenue and $6.61 per share.

Healthcare Industry Sees an Uptick in Ransomware Attacks

Ransomware attacks, which disable a target's computer systems and cause substantial havoc, are becoming widespread in the healthcare industry. In December 2022, the JAMA Health Forum reported that the annual ransomware attacks on hospitals and other providers doubled from 2016 to 2021.

CBS News reported that a May 2023 JAMA Network Open studying the impact of an attack on a health system discovered that waiting times, median length of stay, and patients leaving against medical advice had all increased.

In an October 2023 preprint, researchers at the University of Minnesota found an almost 21% rise in patients' deaths in a ransomware-afflicted hospital.