‘Flying blind.’ Days without online medical records leaves VMFH staff in bind
CommonSpirit Health, parent company of Virginia Mason Franciscan Health, offered no new details Friday in an IT security incident that had kept VMFH sites and others without an online medical records network for five days.
Its MyChart online patient portal also remained down.
The lack of records has led to canceled surgeries and colonoscopies, missed medical appointments and lapses in prescription refills, according to stories shared with The News Tribune from patients and employees. Others have taken to social media about their particular medical situation in Washington state or elsewhere in the CommonSpirit Health network.
A VMFH physician who did not want to be identified as he was not authorized to speak for the system told The News Tribune on Friday his staff had been basically “flying blind” all week.
“It’s been a disaster, frankly,” he said. “Moving forward, we can’t see our next appointments or have any ability to reschedule.”
In many cases, he added, “we don’t have patient phone numbers to confirm, so you don’t know who’s coming in that day.”
The only information given to staff has been that the situation involved an IT security incident with CommonSpirit Health, he said.
Doctors to some extent have relied on patients to tell them what their visits were about, with no advance medical history prep. Prescription refills and lab orders were also a continuing challenge, with paper copies being generated for patients to pick up from some physician offices and take to pharmacies or labs.
VMFH in a statement on its website, noted: “We have canceled or rescheduled some patient appointments. If your appointment was not able to be rescheduled immediately, you will be contacted when we are able to reschedule your appointment.”
On Friday, NBC News reported, “While CommonSpirit declined to share specifics, a person familiar with its remediation efforts confirmed to NBC News that it had sustained a ransomware attack.”
Neither CommonSpirit Health, based in Chicago, nor VMFH with administrative offices in Seattle and Tacoma, have offered any statements beyond that they were dealing with an IT security incident, first reported Monday.
CommonSpirit Health is the second-largest nonprofit health system in the nation, with more than 140 hospitals and 1,000 care sites across 21 states, including VMFH hospitals and clinics in the Puget Sound region.
Robert Perry, chief information security officer of Carilion Clinic in Roanoke, Virginia, told Becker’s Hospital Review on Friday, “For larger health systems, there are usually larger budgets and resources, but complexity becomes an impediment to cyber resilience as more computers, locations and staff increases the ‘attack surface’ for cybercriminals.”
This story was originally published October 7, 2022 at 2:48 PM with the headline "‘Flying blind.’ Days without online medical records leaves VMFH staff in bind."
