Erie County Medical Systems Remain Down Almost Two Weeks After Attack

Erie County Medical Center Remains Down 13 Days After Attack

Erie County Medical Center, located in Buffalo, New York was recently hit with a virus, leaving its systems down for the last 13 days.  Although the medical facility has yet to confirm the virus was ransomware, Buffalo News made reports, that is indeed the case.

According to Healthcare IT News, the hospital’s website is back up and thousands of hard drives have been returned to workstations.  However, this process is not even close to being over.

The hospital’s electronic health record systems are currently online but only for view-only.  Erie County Medical Center’s emergency, ambulatory surgery, transplantation, dentistry and direct admission departments is using an electronic registration process.

The goals for the week of April 24, 2017 are to:

  • Establish a new hospital email system – employees are currently using temporary email addresses
  • Continue restoring the inpatient health record system functions – expected to take a couple weeks
  • Reestablishing electronic communication with lab system
  • Fixing the bed coordinating system
  • Bringing the restored desktop computers back online – expected to take a couple weeks

The week of May 1, the hospital intends to tie up remaining items from the week prior, as well as work on the electronic transmission of x-ray images and physician documentation.

Other Ransomware Attacks

To see a full list of ransomware attacks that have taken place in 2017, you can click here. We have also created a ransomware map, see below, of the ransomware attacks that have taken place in the U.S.

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