Update of February 10, 2023: This incident reportedly affected 617,000 patients. It is not showing up on HHS’s breach tool yet. CentraState’s substitute notice can be found on their website.
Original post:
Ken Serrano reports:
A cybersecurity problem at CentraState Medical Center has prompted the hospital to divert ambulances and most new patients to other facilities, a spokeswoman said.
Spokeswoman Lori Palmer said critical care at the hospital has not been affected and the hospital is still taking some walk-in patients.
Read more at app.com
The issue was detected Friday morning. As of time of this publication, the following notice still appears on the medical center’s web site homepage:
Statement on CentraState IT Issue
CentraState Health December 30th, 2022
CentraState Medical Center is experiencing some technical problems related to an IT security issue. We are investigating the cause and impact at this time. Patient care has not been adversely affected.
I’m not sure how you say care has not been adversely affected when you have diverted all ambulances, but the CEO was interviewed and said that personnel were still able to access patients’ records, and they have implemented a downtime plan for recording patient updates, so it’s not exactly clear what is going on although it does sound like a ransomware attack.