Description: Lurie Children’s Hospital building Source: luriechildrens.org
Lurie Children’s Hospital’s systems were placed offline on Jan. 31 due to what has been confirmed to be a cyberattack.
The hospital is currently operating without phones, emails, and/or electronic records.
During the Feb. 8 press conference, hospital officials confirmed that the Lurie Children’s Hospital network had been accessed by a “known criminal threat actor.”
Chief Medical Officer Marcelo Malakooti, MD, stated that the hospital takes the matter very seriously and has been “working closely around the clock with outside and internal experts and in collaboration with law enforcement including the FBI. This is an active and ongoing investigation.”
As of Feb. 14, the hospital’s systems have been down for two weeks, and it may take some time for the system to be restored.
“Cybersecurity experts said depending on the size and complexity of the network, it can take several weeks to recover from a cyberattack,” stated the ABC7 article.
The incident was initially described as a network outage on Jan. 31, but a public statement was released by hospital officials the following day that listed the incident as a response to a “cybersecurity matter.”
Despite the cybersecurity matter, the hospital will continue to accept patients and provide care with as few interruptions as possible, according to their website.
Patients are being contacted via text message and staff are working on paper due to the inability to access online medical records through MyChart. MyChart is an online patient portal that provides access to a patient’s medical records.
The families of patients at the hospital have expressed frustration with the situation and its repercussions. Deborah Land, whose teenage daughter is a patient at Lurie Children’s Hospital, expressed that “the outage has caused an infuriating runaround.”
Land noted that her daughter required blood work for an upcoming appointment, but the digital order to do so was inaccessible due to the systems being offline.
The NBC article in which Land is quoted continued that “despite repeated calls to the hospital’s emergency call center and a visit to the hospital, no one has given her a paper order for the bloodwork.”
Land’s daughter is also on controlled substances with a prescription that gets refilled weekly via MyChart. Land had to find another doctor to write the prescription due to the incident, and she has not been able to reach the specialist because she cannot call, email, or MyChart.
The hospital opened a separate call center on Feb. 2 for patients to ask questions about care or appointments that were non-urgent and for prescription refills.
Opening a call center has not resolved all of the resulting communication issues, however, as Land voiced that she had yet to hear back from the center as of Feb. 7.
Jason Castillo stated in a Chicago Sun Times article that he and his wife called the center multiple times and left voicemails regarding the rescheduling of their seven-month-old daughter’s heart surgery. The surgery was called off while their daughter was waiting for anesthesia on Jan. 31 due to the cyberattack.
Castillo continued that his wife had received a call from Lurie on Feb. 6, with the news that their daughter’s surgery would be scheduled for Feb. 8.
“As far as the process for medical care, he said it’s ‘been basically the same as before,’ though the hospital may have to redo tests because digital records are inaccessible,” wrote the article.
Both Land and Castillo voiced frustration with the way the hospital has proceeded. “It’s a total mess. The hospital’s not telling anybody anything,” declared Land.
“We recognize the frustration and concern this situation creates for all those impacted. We are so grateful to our Lurie Children’s community for the outpouring of support. We are especially inspired by our workforce and their resilience and commitment to our mission,” communicated the hospital via their website.
As the largest children’s hospital in the Chicago area, and being nationally renowned, Lurie Children’s Hospital treated roughly 260,000 patients in 2023 alone.
It remains unclear as to when the hospital will resume full functionality.
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