ATTACK2024-02-21 · Change Healthcare / UnitedHealth Group · US-wide · 21 days
The Day the Claims Stopped
Change Healthcare, ransomware, and the anatomy of a single point of failure
TL;DR
In February 2024, ransomware took down Change Healthcare — a clearinghouse most patients had never heard of that touched roughly a third of U.S. claims. Pharmacies reverted to cash and paper; small practices went weeks without revenue. The clearest demonstration yet that healthcare's most critical systems are the ones nobody can see.
TL;DR
[Write the 3-sentence TL;DR here — this can restate or expand on the tldr frontmatter field above, since that field also drives the case card on the Observatory index.]
Timeline
[Five labeled moments, in order. First one is the incident (red), the rest are gold. Example format:
- 2024-02-21 — Ransomware detected, systems taken offline
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The System
[What was this system, who relied on it, why did it matter? Plain, confident, first person.]
The Stress
[What actually happened — the event itself.]
Points of Failure
[The failure. Be specific: what stopped working, for whom, for how long.]
Points of Resilience
[Equal weight to “Points of Failure.” What kept working, what people or systems improvised, what safety nets caught the fall. Teal always means resilience — don’t skip this section.]
What It Teaches
[Numbered takeaways.
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Sources
[Numbered, primary sources first.
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Last reviewed 2026-07-14 · Public sources only