INDIANAPOLIS -- The cyber hack of the Ascension healthcare system of last week continues as patients and their families express concern about the level of health care they’re receiving.
Mark Hammonds, 74, entered Ascension St. Vincents Hospital on Indianapolis’ northside on Mother's Day and is being treated for a blood clot in his lung and an infection.
”When you have different types of diseases, bacterium being one of them, they can get out of hand very quickly and that’s when organs start shutting down so delay in this way, absolutely, we are very concerned,” said Rebekah White, a Texas nurse who flew home to Indy to be by her father’s side. ”Across the board physicians are frustrated, they’re not able to make decisions in a timely manner because they’re not getting the information and nurses are very frustrated, they don’t have the resources that provide the care that they’re used to providing to patients.”
Ascension has admitted that its systems are compromised and patients may experience care delays.
White said her father’s care has also been compromised.
”There’s delays across all systems from radiology, we’re still waiting on those MRI results, they could be back today, they may not be back today,” she said. “Lab work is taking longer, orders that are being placed today are being implemented on the next day, so some of them nearly 24 hours after an order’s been placed, the nurses are taxed, they have high nurse-to-patient ratios and what that means is when you’re paper charting you’re not going to be able to see the patients and do the assessments in the way that you could when the system was up.”
When asked for an update today about progress made in bringing its systems back online, Ascension issued the following statement:
All Ascension hospitals, physician offices, and care sites remain open and operational. Despite the challenges posed by the recent ransomware attack, patient safety continues to be our utmost priority. Our dedicated doctors, nurses, and care teams are demonstrating incredible thoughtfulness and resilience as we utilize manual and paper based systems during the ongoing disruption to normal systems.
Our teams are working directly with any patient whose appointment or procedure will need to be rescheduled. Unless instructed otherwise by their care team, patients should continue to attend appointments as scheduled.
Our care teams are well versed on dynamic situations and are appropriately trained to maintain high quality care during downtime. Our leadership, physicians, care teams, and associates are working to ensure patient care continues with minimal to no interruption.
We are also working diligently on our restoration efforts. We are making progress, however, it will take time to return to normal operations. As systems and services come back online, we will share those updates so that our patients and communities can plan accordingly.
We appreciate our communities' patience and understanding.
We have a dedicated website to share any updates we have across our system. We have expanded the site this week to provide updates related to healthcare services as they relate to specific regions. Please visit https://about.ascension.org/cybersecurity-event for the latest updates.
Dr. David Dunkle, president and CEO of Johnson Memorial Health understands the pressure Ascension is facing as his hospital in Franklin was hit with a cyberattack in 2021.
”Crisis mode was probably a week of absolute, ‘Oh, my gosh, what’s going on?’ I would say within a month or two or patients as far as their daily experience it was pretty much back to normal,” he recalled. ”We weren’t able to take care of as many patients, the volumes definitely, we did have to delay some surgeries, that type of thing, but we never shut down.”
Dunkle said the hospital is still recovering financially three years after the attack.
”Honestly there were just a lot of claims that we were never able to get out the door, we cared for the patient, never received reimbursement for that care,” he said. ”What’s scary is you make the investments in the training and the technology and the people and you still get hacked.”
Experts warn patients that while their medical and billing records may have been exposed, they can protect themselves by changing passwords on all their accounts, opting for two-step verification and monitoring their credit reports for unauthorized purchases or access by hackers.
White recommends that during the crisis, families visit more frequently with their hospitalized loved one for longer periods and conduct more one-on-one conversations with caregivers to make sure everyone is on the same page when it comes to the health care of the patient.