On April 11, Cornwall Community Hospital (CCH) in Ottawa reported some “network Issues” and for patients to expect some delays as they worked to restore systems. The hospital’s EHR system was not affected by the attack.
On April 13, CCH said they had determined that the network issues were a “cyber incident” and external experts had been brought in to help. Once again, patients were told to expect some delays. They were also told that the issues were impacting user access to MyChart.
Their update of April 15 did not really add anything new. CCH informed stakeholders, law enforcement, and the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario. CCH still has not clearly stated whether this was a ransomware incident and whether any ransom demand was received.
The hospital’s problems come at a time when the hospital had already been struggling with being short-staffed and emergency room staff being subjected to verbal and physical abuse over delays in care.