[BreachExchange] Weekend Ransomware Attack Interrupts Care at 2 Ohio Hospitals

[Destry Winant]

https://healthitsecurity.com/news/weekend-ransomware-attack-interrupts-care-at-2-ohio-hospitals

Patients needing emergency care were diverted away from East Ohio
Regional Hospital and Ohio Valley Medical Center over the weekend due
to a ransomware attack.

Officials confirmed the attack began on Friday night and continued
into Saturday afternoon. The emergency transportation team began
bringing those patients to area hospitals due to the attack.

“The OVMC-EORH employees and medical staff have been very adaptive and
supportive and we are able to continue with quality patient care,”
Daniel Dunmyer, OVMC CEO told local news outlets.

The IT team took some computer systems offline to protect the
integrity of patient data.

“We have redundant security, so the attack was able to get through the
first layer but not the second layer,” Karin Janiszewski, OVMC and
EORH director of marketing and public relations, told local news
outlets. “There has been no patient information breach. The hospitals
are switching to paper charting to ensure patient data protection.”

“At the moment, our emergency rooms are unable to take patients by
E-squads, but we can take patients by walk-in. Our IT team is working
around the clock right now and we expect to have the issue resolved by
(Sunday),” Janiszewski said.

Officials have not provided an update on the attack.
HealthITSecurity.com reached out to the health system for further
comment. This story will be updated if more information becomes
available.

Ransomware attacks have continued to plague the healthcare sector
throughout 2018. However, it’s been several months since a provider
has reported care interruption due to an attack. In July, Cass
Regional Medical Center took its EHR for more than a week after a
ransomware attack.

Shortly afterward, another Missouri provider reported a similar
incident. Medical testing giant LabCorp also reported an outage from
ransomware around the same time.