Bluewater Health in Sarnia and Petrolia are among five southwestern Ontario facing a cyberattack which is disrupting patient services.
TransForm Shared Service Organization is a non-profit which provides IT, supply chain and accounts payable services to hospitals in Windsor, Chatham and Lambton. Monday afternoon, it said hospitals in Windsor and Essex were experiencing email and patient record problems.
Late this afternoon, the media relations office said in a news release “we have determined that our member hospitals (including Bluewater Health in Petrolia and Sarnia) are experiencing a cyberattack.”
Trans Form, according to its website, works with five hospitals, 12 community organizations and Ontario Health teams in the area. It has 10,000 electronic devices and handles over 1,000 patient related messages a day.
“Unfortunately, this incident is impacting their provision of care in various ways. For those patients who have care scheduled in the next few days, the hospitals will contact you directly, if possible, to reschedule or provide alternate arrangements.”
Bluewater Health, in a news release posted on its website added “for those patients who have care scheduled in the next few days, we will contact you directly, if possible, to reschedule or provide alternate arrangements. Unfortunately, we may not be able to reach all patients, and we request your understanding if we are required to reschedule care in person at our facilities.”
It’s not immediately clear what type of patient care is being rescheduled as the hospitals across southwestern Ontario deal with the issue.
Trans Form says it is investigating the cause and scope of the cyberattack “including whether patient information was compromised.”
