PhilHealth eyes ‘back to normal’ operations within the day

The Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) said it hopes to bring back normal operations on Thursday almost a week after its system was unplugged following a ransomware attack.

PhilHealth president and CEO Emmanuel Ledesma Jr. bared the plan during the Senate committee on finance’s deliberations on the proposed 2024 budget of the Department of Health (DOH) and its attached agencies, when Senator Loren Legarda asked for updates on the cyber attack.

“I think it’s very most likely that within the day, our operations will be back to normal,” Ledesma said.

The agency’s system—including its website, Health Care Institution (HCI) and member portal, and e-claims—were disabled or unplugged as part of security containment measures after being hit by the Medusa ransomware last Friday, September 22.

PhilHealth executive vice president and COO Eli Santos explained that all of PhilHealth’s  transactions are currently offline and that operations like membership, submissions, and payments are done over the counter.

“At present, to confirm the statement of our President, we are set to turn on our systems today, but we are still completing the preventive measures before we turn it on. We are targeting to turn on our PhilHealth website, member portal, as well as the e-claims,” Santos said.

The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) said Thursday efforts to restore the system of PhilHealth are ongoing, and the agency shall continue to investigate and monitor the acquired logs from PhilHealth's affected systems.

The state health insurer earlier said a total of 72 workstations have been compromised by the Medusa ransomware attack.

Hackers were even reportedly threatening to release the data stolen from its database should the agency fail to pay them $300,000 or approximately P17 million ransom.

PhilHealth stressed that it would not pay for such an amount.

Prior to the cyber attack, Ledesma vowed that PhilHealth would pay a "high percentage" of its P27 billion worth of hospital dues within 90 days or in December.

The Private Hospitals Association of the Philippines Inc. (PHAPI), however, said it was expecting the payment of hospital dues to take longer after the cyber attack.

“Ngayon nagkaroon ng ganito (cyber-attack), well of course we are expecting na sana matuloy. But then nagkaroon naman ng problemang ganito na down ang buong system ng PhilHealth, then of course we’ll be expecting more delays,” PHAPI president Dr. Jose Rene de Grano said.

(We are expecting the payment to push through. But then there was a problem like this that the entire PhilHealth system is down, then of course we will be expecting more delays.)

De Grano earlier disclosed that PhilHealth has yet to pay over P10 billion in claims with private hospitals.

During the Senate budget hearing, Ledesma said that PhilHealth has already settled 73% of the total P27 billion unpaid hospital claims. — BM, GMA Integrated News