DESPITE the cyber attack last year, the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) said that they had settled some P45 billion worth of obligatory claims from their partner health facilities last year.

PhilHealth president and CEO Emmanuel Ledesma Jr. noted that the state health insurer had paid P45.1 billion to its partner health facilities as of December 31, 2023.

The said amount of claims was made to the private and government hospitals and health facilities.

It covered the months of August to December 2023, “despite the cybersecurity incident in September.”

It will be recalled that in September last year PhilHealth hugged headlines when the system was hit with a Medusa ransomware with the hackers demanding $300,000 in exchange for the stolen data.

They immediately disabled the system—including its website, Health Care Institution (HCI) and member portal, and e-claims.

It was restored in November.

“The situation has impacted the stakeholders’ receivables in the months of September and October, but PhilHealth was able to release payments of more than P12 billion in August and more than P10 billion in November,” Ledesma said.

“We have bounced back in our capacity to process payables and even exceeded our commitment to settle our obligations with our partner facilities in 90 days,” he added.