Hospitals still offline

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Hospitals still offline

Grace Griffith

 

SYSTEMS have still not been fully restored at local hospitals following a cyber attack that forced them to shut down all computer use.

The incident, which occurred two weeks ago, is still impacting all 23 public health services aligned with Gippsland Health Alliance (GHA) and the South West Alliance of Rural Heath including Gippsland Southern Health Service (Leongatha and Korumburra hospitals), Bass Coast Health, Yarram and District Health Service, and South Gippsland Hospital at Foster.

Mark Johnson, CEO of Gippsland Southern Health Service, said they were “75 percent back online and operational” with email and internet yet to be restored.

He hoped they would be fully functioning again by the end of next week.

“We have a small backlog of client data to be input and additional staff have been put on,” he said.

“We want to say thank you to our clients. We realise it’s maybe a frustration to them, but we are doing the best we can.”

Louise Sparkes, chief operating officer at Bass Coast Health, said, “We have manual workarounds in place and are still working with paper.  

“The biggest impact was dental last week and that’s running as usual as of Monday (October 14).”

 Following a conference between hospitals yesterday, it was confirmed there was no breach of patient information during the hacking attempt.

Jan Child, CEO of Bass Coast Health, said, “The cyber security incident has been taken very seriously by our local IT team and they have had extraordinary support from specialists at the Gippsland Health Alliance.

“In addition, DHHS have deployed many state and federal cyber security experts to work with us to ensure patient privacy is protected and I am very pleased to say that there is no indication that any patient information has been impacted.”

Steps are now being put in place to strengthen IT systems in case of future attacks.

 “Please be assured that it is our highest priority to ensure patient information is secure. Please also be assured that client care has not been hampered,” Mrs Child said.

“Whilst we know some people might have experienced delays, we very much appreciate the community’s patience.”

Mrs Sparkes said while patients have access to all services as usual, it would take the staff a few weeks to catch up and get back to normal.
 “It’s hard not having full functionality but staff continue to do a fantastic job,” she said.

Anyone wanting to contact an affected health service is encouraged to phone until such time as emails are restored.  

 

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Posted by on Oct 15 2019. Filed under Featured, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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