Ransomware Attack On Ohio Hospitals Divert Patients

Ransomware Attack On Ohio Hospitals Divert Patients

A heavy ransomware attack hits East Ohio Regional Hospital (EORH) and Ohio Valley Medical Center (OVMC) of the USA gave a downtime to the hospital’s network on Friday, November 23. The attack left the hospital unable to accept patients emergency response.

Due to this patients, were diverted to other areas of emergency quarters. The ransomware attack affected the computer systems, after which hospital facilities shut down and IT team was called for immediate help.

The officials from the hospital confirmed the attack Saturday morning. After the confirmation, Emergency squads started transporting patients to other local hospitals.

What Officials had to say?

Daniel Dunmyer, the CEO of OVMC said, "The OVMC-EORH employees and medical staff are adaptive and supportive and would continue the quality of patient care."

Janiszewski, Director of the Marketing and Public Relations said, “Our emergency rooms are presently unable to take patients via E-squads, but we can easily take patients by walk-in.”

He further added that the IT team is currently working around the clock and we expect to resolve the issue by this coming Sunday.

While explaining the impact of the ransomware attack Janiszewski said that our cybersecurity was strong thus the data of patients weren’t compromised. Also, there has been no breach in the data information of patients. But, then also hospital is switching to paper charting to assure patient data protection.

In an effort to protect the health information of patients, the hospitals’ IT team took down several computers offline. While the hospitals were unable to care for the emergency squad patients, clinical operations of other units and care settings proceeded as normal.

On Saturday, hospital officials told that both OVMC and EORH will do paper works for the safety of patients data unless the period of downtime is over.

No Information Was Compromised!

Shutting the affected computer networks down was a nice move from the IT department and switching to paper charting furthermore ensured that the patients' data remains protected.

Though the Sustained periods of EHR downtime disrupted the hospital operations, nowadays data breaches at healthcare all over the USA are increasing day by day.

This year’s Allscripts Ransomware attack on American Healthcare solution’s Electronic Health Record also saw impacts on 1500 medical practices. The attack was drastic and hit the client base of 2,20,000 people including doctors, patients and staff members.

Also, Read: Crazy Ransomware: A File Encryption Threat On Windows

However, ensuring the happenings of such cyber attacks, we think Ohio hospital didn’t saw a major impact as their client base is still safe as given by the reports from cybersecurity experts.

But, we need to take care of such activities whether the attacks are on our home computers or at organizations. Thus, we recommend an antimalware tool - Malware Crusher to prevent your systems from viruses, malware and ransomware.

Is Ohio Hospital Recovered?

A letter to customers from CEO Daniel Dunmyer said, “The company will replicate professional EHR, will use multiple Storage Area Networks and virtual environments to speed the recovery of files and data.”

The final efforts of recovery are completed and it is advisable to all patients, clients and customers to inquire about all features before accessing the e-portal again.

The execution of the response plan was on time but Ohio’s IT department couldn't communicate verbally with the cyber attackers. Moreover, people over the IT department didn’t know which ransomware was it that gave such a hard time to the hospital.

Presently, the hospital has overcome the cyber attack of ransomware, it is still unclear whether the systems are completely back to normal or not.

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