Cyberattack recovery continues at health alliance, full restoration months away

Recovery in the wake of last fall’s cyberattack — which hit five regional hospitals — continues at Chatham-Kent Health Alliance.

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Speaking at a media teleconference Monday, Lori Marshall, CKHA president and chief executive, said progress has been made on the issue, with more work still to come.

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“This is where we begin to rebuild our systems, make sure that we’re continuing to return to our service levels for the community,” she said. “(It’s) really an important phase that we’ve moved into.”

The health alliance, as well as hospitals in Windsor, Sarnia and Leamington, was targeted in a cyberattack.

Marshall said a “pivotal milestone” occurred on Dec. 12.

“At 7 pm that evening, it was actually rather emotional for me, on the overhead system I called off the Code Gray to create the all-clear at both the Chatham and the Wallaceburg sites,” she said.

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“That was really the recovery of our server, health information system, which is our major electronic health records. That was the largest component of our recovery.”

Marshall said the focus was on primary clinical platforms that “had the most significant impact on our patients and service delivery.”

Other recovered systems included finance and payroll.

“To get all of those things up and going in December really required the entire hospital community and our resources to get it to that stage,” she said.

The second phase of the recovery will include other clinical systems and support, as well as what Marshall called “back office” systems.

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“Almost every appliance you buy, everything that’s in our home is linked to information technology,” she said.

“It is going to take us a number of months to actually be able to restore back to the way we were before the cyberattack.”

Deb Crawford, hospital board chair, said CKHA appreciates the support it has seen since October.

“We want to thank the community for its patience with us,” she said. “And really acknowledge the staff and all the physicians who’ve worked through the event with such professionalism and dedication. It hasn’t been easy on anyone.”

Following a joint release that the hospitals all went dark on Oct. 23, it was revealed an attack on systems designed to secure patient health information was part of a scheme to extort money from the institutions.

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The blackmailers targeted the five hospitals through TransForm Shared Services Organization, which runs their information technology, supply chain and accounts payable systems.

The attack shut down the hospitals’ access to Wi-Fi, email, and patient information systems. Procedures were postponed, hospitals couldn’t reach some patients and staff reverted to paper charting.

While it was announced in mid-December that the systems at the hospitals were on track for recovery, the hackers claimed they had sold the sensitive information of about 270,000 patients on the dark web.

The impacted agencies face a $480-million lawsuit filed Nov. 15 in Sarnia by Dahab Law.

With Postmedia files

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