Ascension Saint Agnes resumes seeing ER patients, though cyberattack effects continue

The emergency department at Ascension Saint Agnes Hospital in Southwest Baltimore resumed seeing new patients Thursday night, following a cyberattack Wednesday that affected clinical operations at Ascension health centers nationwide.

Emergency services remain suspended at several Ascension hospitals across the country, a spokesperson for the nonprofit Catholic health system said in an update posted on Ascension’s website on Thursday evening. MyChart, Ascension’s electronic health records system, where patients can view their medical charts and message their providers, also remained unavailable at several hospitals, along with some phone systems and systems used to order certain tests, procedures and medications.

At Saint Agnes, however, the situation is changing “minute by minute,” said Justin Blome, a hospital spokesperson for the hospital.

While some systems have come back online, care teams are being cautious about what they use to treat patients.

“The priority is patient care,” he said. “I can assure you that hasn’t faltered.”

Saint Agnes declared a “Mini Disaster” on Wednesday following the cyberattack, signaling to emergency services personnel that they should bring patients to neighboring hospitals rather than Saint Agnes.

Hospitals typically declare Mini Disaster status when their emergency departments are unable to accept patients due to a fire, power outage, gas leak or other similar problem affecting their facilities, said Dr. Ted Delbridge, executive director of the Maryland Institute for Emergency Medical Services Systems. Although local hospitals occasionally experience disruptions in emergency department services because of technological problems, it’s rare for them to suspend emergency department services for longer than an hour or two, he said.

Officials at Ascension, which has about 140 hospitals around the country, are working “around the clock with internal and external advisors to investigate, contain and restore” their systems following the attack, an Ascension spokesperson said. The health network does not have a timeline for when the investigation and restoration work will be completed, the spokesperson said.

In the meantime, providers are continuing to care for patients by using “downtime procedures” — alternative workflows and protocols for when a health center’s typical systems are unavailable. These protocols can look like having providers transport medications and prescriptions between floors by foot, rather than using the hospital’s pneumatic tube system, or having doctors and nurses take notes by hand.

Ascension expects providers will be using these procedures “for sometime,” the spokesperson said. Patients should bring notes on their symptoms and a list of their current medications and prescription numbers to their appointments so their providers can call their pharmacies to order medications for them.

Some non-emergency elective procedures, tests and appointments have been temporarily paused while Ascension works to bring its systems back online, the spokesperson said.

The health system has notified the appropriate authorities, it said in a news release.

“Together, we are working to fully investigate what information, if any, may have been affected by the situation,” the release said. “Should we determine that any sensitive information was affected, we will notify and support those individuals in accordance with all relevant regulatory and legal guidelines.”