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UnitedHealth Group is now asking healthcare providers to pay back the emergency loans it gave them after last year's major cyberattack.

The loans, which totaled $9 billion, were issued to help providers continue operations after UnitedHealth's tech unit, Change Healthcare, was hacked, halting payment systems nationwide.

Several doctors and clinic owners say they've received emails from Optum, a UnitedHealth subsidiary, demanding full repayment.

In some cases, providers are being warned that if they don't repay, UnitedHealth will take money directly from their reimbursements, Reuters said.

"Now, more than one year post the event and with services restored, we have begun the process of recouping the interest-free funding we provided," a Change Healthcare spokesperson said.

Dr. Catherine Mazzola, who runs the New Jersey Pediatric Neuroscience Institute, said her clinic received two loans after the hack: one for $35,000 and another for $500,000. So far, $68,000 in reimbursements from New Jersey Medicaid has been withheld from her clinic by Optum.

"We've already paid $40,000 since the hack," Dr. Mazzola said. "Every week, we're biting our fingernails trying to figure out which bills we can afford to pay." Her clinic employs over 70 people and treats many Medicaid patients.

Healthcare Providers Slam Sudden Repayment Push by UnitedHealth

Another provider, Dr. Christine Meyer from Exton, Pennsylvania, said her primary care practice received a $756,000 loan last year.

On April 1, she got an email from Optum demanding repayment within five business days. When she called to discuss it, the representative simply said, "We are assuming everything's flowing normally now."

Meyer says the sudden demand didn't match earlier discussions she had with Optum about her financial situation.

Josh Marquez, who runs Compassion Recovery in California, says his clinic borrowed $130,000 after the cyberattack.

He claims the clinic is still owed money from old claims that haven't been paid out since the hack. "They're harassing us for this money, but we haven't even been fully paid ourselves," he said.

According to WallStreetJournal, UnitedHealth says it is trying to work with providers on repayment plans. It noted that it has already recovered about $3.2 billion in loan repayments as of October.

The company compared the process to how federal agencies recouped emergency health loans during the same outage.

Still, some doctors say they feel abandoned. "It's just this never-ending wound that physicians are dealing with," said Dr. Mazzola. "We're still trying to recover, and now we're being pushed again."