Emergency Rooms Hit by Cyber Siege: Patient Diversions Spread Across Three States

During the recent ransomware attack on one of the hospitals in the chain of 30 that operates in six states, patients from some of its ERs will be diverted to other hospitals over the coming weeks, while some elective surgeries will be postponed. 

Ardent Health Services owns or partially owns all of the hospitals affected by this scandal, as well as other hospitals in at least five states. The company is based in Tennessee and owns more than twenty dozen hospitals in at least that number of states. 

As of now, several hospitals in East Texas are unable to accept ambulances from other hospitals, along with an Albuquerque hospital that has 263 beds; one hospital in Montclair, New Jersey that has 365 beds; and another hospital network in East Texas that serves thousands of patients each year. 

There is no doubt that the Coronavirus pandemic has been marked by disruptions to healthcare services that are caused by ransomware, which secures computers for hackers to demand a fee in return for unlocking them.

Cybercrime firm Recorded Future, which specialises in cyber security, reports that hospitals are now being targeted – and demands for extortion payments are being made. There have been at least 300 documented ransomware attacks on healthcare facilities every year since 2020, according to an NBC repo

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