Much of the province’s healthcare system remains in the dark this morning as an investigation continues into what could be a cyber attack on health care IT systems.
The outages began on Saturday. All health authorities are affected, with Eastern Health being hit the hardest. There, they are mostly back to a paper-based system, and with a few exceptions, such as dialysis, are only handling emergencies at this time.
Officials could offer little insight into how and why the system was targeted, or when it will be back up again. That will cause a backlog as cancelled appointments get rescheduled as the system eventually comes back online.
Eastern Health CEO David Diamond says unfortunately the last few years have given them lots of practice in dealing with healthcare backlogs
He says there will be an ongoing prioritization to ensure those appointments that are not an emergency, yet are urgent in nature, get rescheduled first.
(File photo.)
Opposition Leader David Brazil questioned Health Minister John Haggie about the potential cyber attack in the House of Assembly yesterday.
Brazil asked whether a ransom was requested and whether a timeframe has been provided on resolving the issue. Haggie was told by Bell that the analysis will take days, and that the problem is the result of a possible cyber attack.
Meanwhile, Minister of Digital Government and Service NL, Sarah Stoodley says that cyber attacks are becoming more common at all levels.
Stoodley says government receives “thousands” of attack attempts every month.
She says it’s known as “network intrusion activity” and is mostly automated attempts to gain access to the system.
