Change Healthcare Update--March 18, 2024

     Change Healthcare posted the below update today on the Optum website.

  "Assurance, our medical claims preparation software, is back online. On March 18, testing and implementation began with our first providers. Reconnection with thousands of providers will occur in phases throughout the week. By the end of the week, we expect all Assurance users — including thousands of hospitals across the country — will have complete functionality enabled again, including claims editing. Using the software, providers can begin preparing the backlog of claim files that accumulated during the outage.  

We expect to have third-party documentation available prior to services becoming operational. Following this initial phase, remaining services restoration will continue through ongoing phases of activation until all customers have been connected.  

By the end of the week, we expect our largest clearinghouse, Relay Exchange, will be back online as well. Reconnection will begin with providers, including Assurance customers, channel partners and other clearinghouses, to enable claim submission to payers. Claims prepared in Assurance will not be released to payers until this happens.  

Phased reconnection and testing will continue into the week of March 25 as operations ramp up. Given the amount of volume that has already transitioned to other submission solutions and the phased approach, system capacity challenges are not expected. We are coordinating with other clearinghouses.  
 

Notably, there will be a small subset of claims submitters — mainly channel partners — who do not have the capability to connect with Relay Exchange. We will work with those submitters directly to find other solutions."  

SO WHAT DOES THE ABOVE MEAN?  Change has various platforms.  I believe Assurance is a platform for large submitters like for major hospital chains.  As for Relay Exchange, I'm not sure if Revenue Performance Advisor is part of Revenue Performance Advisor BUT I believe it is (Change had purchased the Relay Health clearinghouse years ago).  If so, then hopefully Revenue Performance Advisor may be back online this week but per the above it could be next week before RPA is brought back online.

For TherapyNotes users, we do not know what platform/direct connection is used.  My advise is to constantly monitor the TherapyNotes blog...but again it appears that access may resume either by the end of this week or possibly next week.

Thanks to all for your patience.
Steve