Officials say 267,000 patient records affected

Bluewater Health’s patient data appears to be the target of hackers.

TransForm Shared Services – which provides IT and supply support for Bluewater Health in Sarnia and Petrolia as well as hospitals and health care organizations in Chatham-Kent and Windsor-Essex – first reported troubles Oct. 23. Since then, patient appointments have been cancelled in Sarnia.

In a news release today, Transform and Bluewater Health said “The stolen data includes information about approximately 5.6 million patient visits made by approximately 267,000 unique patients.

“The stolen database report did not include clinical documentation records. Bluewater Health is still in the process of determining the precise individuals included in this database report and the data that was taken and will notify those affected in accordance with the law.”

Bluewater Health says some staff information was accessed, but the hospital has “reached the preliminary conclusion that no employee or professional staff social insurance numbers or banking information was taken.”

And no donor information was compromised, officials said.

Bluewater Health has offered its employees two years of free credit monitoring to help them determine if their information is being used.

Hospitals in Windsor Essex did have some employee data hacked but say no banking or social insurance numbers were accessed. Some patient information – but not charts – were also accessed. In Chatham-Kent, no staff data was taken.

A patient cyber security hotline has been established. For inquiries please call: 519-437-6212 (8 am to 11 pm Monday through Friday).

Staff questions can be directed to their HR teams.