Hospital recovers from cyber hack meltdown
SERVICES are returning to normal at Southport and Ormskirk Hospital Trust following the wide-reaching cyber-attack which sent the NHS into meltdown.
Southport and Ormskirk Hospital Trust was one of many UK hospitals that was hit by the unprecedented global attack on Friday (May 12).
The attack sparked an immediate impact, with many trusts rushing to shut down their entire IT systems, and some turning off their telephone systems.
Patients at Southport Hospital had to be turned away from appointments.
Therese Patten, chief operating officer for Southport and Ormskirk Hospital Trust, said: “The trust took swift action to shut down and protect our many clinical systems when the threat emerged on Friday.
“This included pharmacy, x-ray and imaging, clinical tests and digitally-held patient records.”
The trust began successfully restoring critical clinical systems on Monday evening and many more came back online on Wednesday.
Both Southport and Ormskirk hospitals continue to be open for emergency care, but people have been asked to only use A&E if their need is urgent so staff are able to focus their resources on “the sickest patients.”
The volume of planned services had to be reduced at the start of the week to ensure the trust was able to continue running a safe service.
Ms Patten said: “I want to reassure patients and the public that all patient information is safe and will be available to us as systems are brought back online.
“I also want to thank our staff for maintaining a safe service for patients over a challenging past few days and, in particular, our IT colleagues for working night and day to get systems back online with the support of colleagues from across the region.
“We are also supporting the criminal investigation into the attack on the NHS and have supplied affected computer equipment to the police.”
At least 16 hospitals in the UK had to reject patients after systems were taken offline last week.
The huge cyber attack infected NHS trusts all over the country and led to all digital systems being pulled down.
The ransomware threatened hospitals that they would lose access to patient records and other files if they didn’t pay money to the hackers.
Pictures posted on social media showed screens of NHS computers with images demanding payment, saying: “Ooops, your files have been encrypted!”
Services started returning to normal on Wednesday (May 17) with more up-to-date information available on the trust’s website, www.southportand ormskirk.nhs.uk.