Five hospitals in southwest Ontario are still working to restore services and predict that while services are being restored, it may take months to figure out who was affected by a recent ransomware attack on their IT vendor, TransForm SSO, that resulted in locked files and the theft of millions of data files and records from Windsor Regional Hospital, Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare, Erie Shores HealthCare, Bluewater Health and Chatham-Kent Health Alliance. CBC reports on the latest news release from the vendor and hospitals:
“While some of our systems are functional, they are slower than usual and require extra time,” officials said in a release. “This affects access to labs and diagnostic imaging.”
The hospitals say doctors will cancel procedures if they feel it is unsafe to proceed with some patient information missing. Patients will be rescheduled as soon as possible, the hospitals say.
Residents are also reminded to bring their health card to the hospital when seeking emergency care, and to avoid the hospital except in true emergencies and attend local clinics or their family doctor where possible.
Read more at CBC.
Right now, the focus has to be on restoring patient services and access to patient records to prevent medical errors. Eventually, there needs to be a hard look at the vendor’s cybersecurity and whether it was appropriate given the sensitivity of the data and critical systems.
