Hospital steers radiology patients elsewhere, switches to paper records following cyberattack
An Illinois hospital diverted radiology patients to a different imaging site and reverted to paper records after a recent cyberattack.
Hackers hit St. Margaret’s Health in Spring Valley on Sunday, forcing the 44-bed institution to shut down its computer network. Amid the disruption, all web-based operations including email and the patient portal were unavailable, the News Tribune reported Monday.
As IT leaders determined what went wrong, the hospital is steered diagnostic imaging procedures to its Peru, Illinois, location 10 minutes away, which was not affected by the cyberattack. A staff radiologist recommended the move to ensure no abnormalities were missed when analyzing high-def images, the report noted.
St. Margaret’s is also used old school paper charts and fax services as it grapples with the disruption.
“We have a number of software applications that are put in place to prevent this,” Vice President of Quality and Community Services Linda Burt told the news outlet. “We have not determined yet how this was able to bypass some of those systems. That’s why the experts are here.”
Read more from the News Tribune below.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.