Recovery from last fall’s cyberattack on area health-care providers continues.
Officials from the Chatham-Kent Health Alliance said during a recent update with local media that their main systems came back online in December.
Five hospitals – Chatham-Kent Health Alliance, Bluewater Health, Erie Shores HealthCare, Hôtel-Dieu Grace Healthcare and Windsor Regional Hospital – plus their shared service provider, TransForm Shared Service Organization, were hit in late October by a ransomware attack.
Deb Crawford, chair of the board of the CKHA, thanked the public and hospital for understanding and perseverance.
“We want to thank the community for having such patience with us, and for the professionalism and dedication of the staff and physicians,” she said.
Lori Marshall, president and CEO of CKHA, said there is still a lot more work to be done.
“We are in the recovery phase of the cyberattack. We’re rebuilding our systems and working to return to our service levels for our community,” she said.
In mid-December, CKHA had its health information system platform – Cerner – on which many hospital applications run, come back online. Payroll and financial systems also went live.
“We are entering into Phase 2, a focus on other clinical system supports, some of our back-office systems,” Marshall said.
Cybercriminal group Diaxin has claimed responsibility for the attack here in southwestern Ontario.
How they got into the system is something hospital officials refuse to comment on, as there is a multi-national police investigation underway.
