Ohio Hospitals Disrupted by Ransomware Attack

Ohio Hospitals Disrupted by Ransomware Attack

“The OVMC-EORH employees and medical staff have been very adaptive and supportive, and we are able to continue with quality patient care,” Ohio Valley Medical Center CEO Daniel Dunmyer said.

  • By Jessica Davis
  • Nov 29, 2018

East Ohio Regional Hospital and Ohio Valley Medical Center directed emergency care patients to other area hospitals this weekend due to a ransomware attack interrupting patient care, officials said.

According to officials, the ransomware attack began Friday night and continued into Saturday afternoon. Due to the attack, the emergency transportation teams began taking patients needing emergency care to area hospitals.

“The OVMC-EORH employees and medical staff have been very adaptive and supportive, and we are able to continue with quality patient care,” Ohio Valley Medical Center CEO Daniel Dunmyer said.

The hospitals’ IT team took some computer systems offline during the attack to protect patient health data. The hospitals were unable to take care of emergency squad patients, but clinical operations in other units and care settings proceeded as usual.

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

During the attack, Janiszekski said emergency rooms were unable to take patients by E-squad but could take walk-in patients.

The healthcare sector has experienced multiple ransomware attacks this year. Long periods of emergency health record (EHR) downtime can interrupt operations at hospitals, as some healthcare organizations voluntarily go offline to protect the medical and financial information of patients during security incidents.

About the Author

Jessica Davis is the Associate Content Editor for 1105 Media.

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