Some of the healthcare IT systems have come back online following last weekend’s cyber attack, but government is still not able to fully say which systems those are.
One thing that Health Minister John Haggie could reveal, is that email connectivity has returned in Eastern Health. However, Haggie wouldn’t get into any other specifics about what is and isn’t working at the moment, due to the sensitivity of the situation.
However, he says the full functionality of Meditech isn’t there yet, and won’t be for some time.
Emergency and urgent services in acute care facilities only will proceed today and patients that have not been contacted should assume their appointment has been cancelled.
Psychiatry clinics are resuming today. Anyone with a scheduled appointment and who has not been contacted should call their clinic prior to their visit.
Some phone systems, including the Client Relations line, are still affected by the outage. Officials are working to restore all systems.
Minister Haggie says eastern health will start to contact those who may have missed their chemotherapy appointments and they are starting to work though the backlog @VOCMNEWS
— Richard Duggan (@RDugganVOCM) November 4, 2021
Chemotherapy treatments for patients in the Eastern Health region are resuming today.
Haggie says oncologists have been able to identify those who had appointments cancelled and whose treatment is timely. He says treatment will start today and will continue through the weekend. However, Haggie states that the process to get treatments done may be slower than it was before.
He says that if the electronic systems related to chemotherapy are unavailable then the capacity will be lower.
Radiation therapy treatments have been cancelled and patients will be called directly when Eastern Health can proceed with the appointment. Patients can also assume clinic appointments are cancelled if they have not been contacted by the health authority. Injection appointments scheduled between November 1 and 5 should proceed to the Dr. H. Bliss Murphy Cancer Centre today between 1:30 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. with their injection medication.
Meanwhile, the minister is providing an update on supports for people from Labrador who travel to the metro area for treatment.
He says his department is working on a form of remediation for those individuals whose appointments were cancelled because of the cyber attack. He says that information should be available in the next few days.
Eastern Health is providing an update on its Community Support Program services amid the IT outage.
Clinical services such as community health nurses and social workers are continuing to deliver services, however there may be delays and new requests for home flu shots are on hold.
Financial services, after hours social workers on-call, and adult protection inquiries are all continuing.
For medical equipment and supplies, requests are continuing, however new requests are still being processed and there may be delays in non-urgent situations.
