![]() Hospital leaders say for this reason, cyberattacks pose an existential threat to the viability of hospitals across the country, especially financially-struggling hospitals or smaller hospitals in rural areas. For months they were unable to bill insurance plans to be paid in a timely fashion.Īn IBM report estimated that cyberattacks on hospitals cost an average of $10 million per incident, excluding any ransom payment –– the highest among all industries. ![]() The hospital's billing department was also crippled. The white board and other tools they used during the cyberattack are still stored in a backroom, in case another attack takes place. When that tracking system went dark, staff members had to physically guard the unit doors.ĮR nurse Dona Thomas and her colleagues came up with a makeshift system – involving a white board and dry erase markers – to keep track of patient care in the months following the cyberattack on Johnson Memorial. In the obstetrics unit, newborns usually wear security bracelets around their tiny legs to prevent unauthorized adults from moving the infant or leaving the unit with them. The emergency department had to divert ambulances with sick patients to other hospitals because the staff couldn't access patient medical records. That upended normal operations in various departments. Leaders decided to disconnect after the attack, assess, and then rebuild, which meant taking several critical systems offline. In the end, the hospital did not pay the ransom. All the while, he had a hospital full of patients needing care and employees wondering what they should do. "It was information overload," Dunkle recalls. The Office for Civil Rights can also impose financial penalties against hospitals if HIPAA-protected patient data is divulged. Other health-data breaches have led to class-action lawsuits from patients. ![]() Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control if an organization facilitates or makes a payment to cybercriminals.ĭunkle also worried about possible lawsuits, because the hackers claimed that they stole sensitive patient information they'd release to the "dark web" if Johnson Memorial did not pay up. " want you to know that if you pay a ransom to what is deemed a terrorist organization, you can open yourself up down the line to a fine," he says.ĭunkle is referring to potential fines levied by the U.S. health care facilities more than doubled between 20. One study found that cyberattacks on U.S. Johnson Memorial was just one victim in a rising wave of cyberattacks on hospitals across the country. The note was signed by the "Hive," a prominent ransomware group that has targeted more than 1,500 hospitals, school districts and financial firms in over 80 countries, according to the U.S. The hackers left a ransom note on every server, demanding the hospital pay $3 million in Bitcoin in the next few days. The information technology team at Johnson Memorial discovered a ransomware group had infiltrated the health system's networks. "My chief of nursing said, 'Well, it looks like we got hacked.'" David Dunkle, CEO of the health system based in Franklin, Indiana. "I remember like it was yesterday," says Dr. They were just coming out of a weeks-long surge of COVID hospitalizations and deaths, fueled by the Delta variant.īut on Friday, October 1, at 3 a.m., the hospital CEO's phone rang with an urgent call. It was October 2021 and the staff at Johnson Memorial Health were hoping they could finally catch their breaths. Matt Ashley, a senior technologist at Johnson Memorial Health in Franklin, Indiana, is part of a small IT team that spent months helping the hospital recover after a crippling cyberattack in 2021.
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