UMC Health says ransomware attack forced it to transfer patients to other hospitals

Lubbock, Texas-based healthcare provider UMC Health System said it experienced a significant ransomware attack that forced it to disconnect its systems and divert patients to other locations.

In a notice posted on its website, UMC said that it recently detected unauthorised activity in its internal network and immediately launched an investigation, with assistance from external cyber security experts, to determine the nature and scope of the incident.

“Immediately after detecting this activity, our teams launched an investigation and took steps to proactively disconnect our systems to contain the incident. Through the ongoing investigation, we determined that the unusual activity was connected to a ransomware incident,” the hospital said.

“Third-parties that have helped other hospitals address similar issues have been engaged to assist in our response and investigation,” UMC added.

UMC said that the ransomware attack affected daily operations and forced it to transfer several non-emergency patients and ambulances to other healthcare facilities as multiple departments had to be closed or operated with significant delays. This has, however, created massive inconvenience for patients as UMC is the only level 1 trauma center within 400 miles.

UMC said its radiology department has suffered a significant outage, creating additional delay in providing reports to patients. The hospital’s online medical prescription service is also unavailable and patients have been asked to carry their prescription hard copies while visiting. Medical reports are, however, available on the patient portal but that can’t be printed for now.

UMC is yet to share details on who is behind the ransomware attack or how the hackers infiltrated its internal network. Also, at the time of publishing, no ransomware group claimed responsibility for the ransomware attack on the healthcare institution.