Cyberattack disrupts Massachusetts hospital system, forces ambulance diversions

A cyberattack on Signature Healthcare, a regional hospital system in Massachusetts, has disrupted critical information systems and forced facilities to turn away ambulances while operating under emergency procedures, officials said.

Signature Healthcare and its flagship facility, Signature Healthcare Brockton Hospital, confirmed Monday that the incident affected multiple internal systems. The organization, which has served communities south of Boston for more than 125 years, immediately activated incident response protocols and shifted to downtime procedures to maintain patient care.

Emergency departments remain open for walk-in patients, and inpatient services and scheduled surgeries are continuing. However, some treatments have been affected, including the cancellation of chemotherapy infusion services for cancer patients on Tuesday. Hospital officials warned that ongoing system outages are likely to cause delays in care.

The disruption has led to ambulance diversions, limiting the hospital’s ability to ընդուն new emergency arrivals by ambulance as technical teams work to restore affected systems. External cybersecurity specialists have been engaged to investigate the incident and support recovery efforts.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, and officials have not disclosed the nature of the intrusion.

The incident reflects a broader pattern of cyber threats targeting healthcare providers, where operational disruptions can directly impact patient care. Hospitals across the United States have faced similar incidents in recent months, with some forced to cancel appointments or suspend services following attacks that compromised networks, communications systems, or medical technologies.

Security officials monitoring threats across the healthcare sector report sustained and elevated levels of malicious activity affecting hospitals, insurers, pharmaceutical companies, and medical device manufacturers. These incidents include ransomware attacks, data theft operations, and, in some cases, activity linked to nation-state actors.