It’s been two weeks since the cyberattack on Change Healthcare, which has impacted hospitals, pharmacies and other health care providers. A pharmacist in Utica said the attack is starting to affect customers, who could also soon be faced with paying full price for medications, or not getting them at all, if problems persist.

Change Healthcare, a branch of United Healthcare, was attacked on Feb. 21, affecting pharmacies and their ability to fill prescriptions.

“It stopped us from being able to process certain prescriptions. Medicare B was one of them. Those we do strips lancets for diabetics and inhalant solutions," said Vinny Chiffy, pharmacist and owner of Parkway Drugs in Utica. "So those we’re not able to process still to this day. The other, second one was the coupons. So if somebody has a brand medication and say their copay is like $50 or $75, a lot of these coupons bring them down to $10. So the patient can afford it. Both of those are still down, so we can’t process either one of those.”

Chiffy said as of now, they are only charging Medicare B patients their copays, but they cannot bill Medicare B for their reimbursement until the system is back up and running.

“The coupon sides, we’re not guaranteed payment on those. So we can’t do anything with those,” Chiffy said.

He said the coupons vary from month to month.

“So if you came in today and you had a $50 copay with a coupon card and we normally process that coupon card to $10, today you’d have to come in and pay $50,” Chiffy explained.

For specialty drugs, he said customers could be looking at more than $1,000. And if this continues, he says the Medicare B patients will have to start paying full price as well.

“So Medicare works a little bit differently. You have to bill the day they’re here in the store. So we’re not even sure all the medications we’ve given out, we’re going to be paid for, for the last two weeks,” Chiffy said.

He said there was talk that if this continued more than 10 days, the processor system would be switched so the claims can start being processed.

“The biggest problem we’re seeing is you have these gigantic companies like United Healthcare and they own, it’s called vertical integration, and they own everything. So when something gets hacked, it doesn’t just affect health care, it affects prescriptions. It’s across the whole board,” Chiffy said. 

It’s a waiting game. Between the three locations in Utica, he said they’ve already lost a few thousand dollars, and it’s unknown if or when they’ll get that money back.