Hundreds of patients hit by hospital hacking crisis
HUNDREDS of patients have already been affected by the disruption to services at Sligo University Hospital as a result of the ransomware attack on the HSE’s IT systems and it is set to hit many more, with no end to the crisis in sight. On Tuesday, a statement issued by the Saolta Hospital Group said the disruptions are expected to continue for the rest of this week but there was no indication as to what will happen next week. Emergency medicine consultant Dr Fergal Hickey, pictured left, said this week that the situation is making it very difficult to treat patients. The HSE has said that hospitals and other
services have been asked to plan for operating essential services “within contingency arrangements” for the next two weeks at least and it could be several weeks before IT systems in its hospitals are back up and running fully. Yesterday, Wednesday, some of the phone lines at the hospital were not working further adding to the problem as people tried to make contact about appointments.
So far this week all outpatient clinics, diagnostics (including x-ray, CT scans, MRI appointments and cardiac investigations), endoscopy services and elective inpatient and day case procedures at Sligo University Hospital have been cancelled.
People who had appointments have been told not to attend unless they receive a call from the hospital to do so. A small number of procedures may go ahead and in this event patients will be contacted directly.
Maternity services and dialysis treatment will ahead and patients should attend their chemotherapy appointments unless contacted and advised otherwise. The hospital’s Emergency Department has been badly hit with what have been described as “significant delays”, as existing IT systems are not in use and the manual workarounds in place are time-consuming.
The hospital is asking that where possible patients should bring their existing patient number or hospital number with them when they come to the hospital or any letter that they have received from the hospital as this will contain information which will make it easier to find existing medical records.
People are also being asked to contact their GP or GP out of hours service in the first instance if their health problem is not urgent.
Consultant Dr Fergal Hickey said: “There will be delays in people receiving the treatment that they need and we will be doing it blind, in other words we won’t necessarily have access to their previous information. We won’t be able to see previous x-rays or previous scans and may not be able to access their hospital chart. “Therefore, we will be doing this with one hand tied behind our backs”.
Saolta has said that ongoing updates on service disruptions will be provided on hse.ie and on saolta.ie.
The HSE has said that the restoration of computer systems in the health service will take “many weeks” following last week’s cyberattack by a criminal gang, suspected to be based in Russia.
While some IT systems in voluntary hospitals could return this week, it will take “several weeks” before systems in other, HSE-run hospitals (such as Sligo) return, a spokesperson told the Irish Times.