MILWAUKEE — Wednesday marked one week since Ascension hospitals were hit by a cyberattack that has affected access to electronic health records, MyChart, some phone lines and various systems tied to medical procedures and medications.
Gavin Rice is an ultrasound tech at Ascension St. Francis Hospital. He said the past week has been hectic as employees identify what systems are working.
“Some areas have fax machines that work and some do not,” said Rice. “Some phones apparently don’t work. Finding our way around those systems and that kind of work. We don’t really have a lot of any direction from anyone in upper admin or management.”
He said while the cyberattack was out of Ascension’s control, he’s hoping for more insight and better internal communication.
“We’re not getting any information — basically we know what the public knows,” said Rice. “They’re not telling us anything. We can only go from rumor and speculation.”
The issues have also affected patients and their families, including one man who told Spectrum News 1 that his mother died at an Ascension hospital last week and he’s unable to move forward with the cremation.
“We got a call a couple days after her death from the funeral home saying, ‘We went to Ascension and they said that they couldn’t release her because there was some kind of paperwork issue,’” said the man who asked not to be publicly identified. “I’m assuming they were experiencing what was the beginning of the cyberattack and [weren’t] able to access the information. We were waiting and the funeral home alerted us to the fact that they tried again to go to Ascension to get her remains, her body, and they couldn’t because they didn’t have the cause of death to be able to send her to cremation.”
He said it’s already an emotional time after losing his mother and this just adds to the stress, but he’s thankful for the funeral home’s help in navigating all of this.
In the meantime, Rice said while Ascension employees are getting the hang of the current systems in place, it’s beginning to weigh on some employees.
“We will get by and do what we need to do to help make sure our patients get the best care that we can give them,” said Rice. “It’s just a matter of how many staff members will burn out between now and then. Before all of this happened, it was standard practice to run everything very bare bones staffing wise and it’s adding a lot of extra strain.”
Wednesday, Ascension released the following statement on the ongoing issues in its facilities nationwide, including in Wisconsin:
“Ascension continues to make progress towards restoration and recovery following the recent ransomware attack. We continue to work with industry leading forensic experts from Mandiant to conduct our investigation into this attack and understand the root cause and how this incident occurred. In parallel, we have brought in additional cybersecurity experts from Palo Alto’s Unit42 and from CYPFER to help supplement our rebuild and restoration efforts. We are focused on getting systems back up and running as safely and as quickly as possible. We are also working on reconnecting with our vendors with the help of our recovery experts. Please be aware that it may still take some time to return to normal operations.
“Our priority remains providing quality patient care and relaying up-to-date information when available as we work through this recovery process. Please continue to refer to this website page along with the regional update pages for more information. We encourage anyone seeking information surrounding the incident or with questions about the operational status of Ascension facilities to visit this page for the latest updates.
“As we continue to progress in these recovery and restoration efforts, we want to express a sincere thank you to our patients and community for your patience and support through this difficult time.”