Vermont Hospitals Still Recovering From October Ransomware Attack

The University of Vermont Health Network is still recovering from a Ryuk Ransomware attack in October 2020, with services slowly coming back online.

In October, the University of Vermont hospitals suffered Ryuk ransomware attack that impacted services to varying degrees in all seven hospitals in their health network.

At the time of the attack, only UVM Medical Center’s patient care was affected, with some elective surgeries rescheduled. Most hospitals, though, were impacted by IT outages such as the unavailability of EPIC medical records, the MyChart patient portal, email, and phone systems.

On Friday, The University of Vermont Health Network issued an update on the ransomware attack explaining that services are being restored. Still, patients may see temporary changes in how their information is displayed.

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“Some information will appear as scanned documents in the My Documents section for visits that occurred while the electronic health record was down. Upcoming appointments, messages, and some test results may take a little longer to appear in MyChart. For any urgent matters, patients should call their provider’s office,” UVM Health Network explained.

Billing statements and payment processing is still delayed for all hospitals.

UVM Medical Center continues to be the most impacted by the attack, and there is no time frame when IT systems will be fully restored.

The University of Vermont Health Network was part of a series of attacks against healthcare conducted by the Ryuk gang in October. Other hospitals included Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in Brooklyn, Sky Lakes Medical Center in Oregon, and St. Lawrence Health System in New York.

These attacks led the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to release a coordinated advisory warning to the healthcare industry of imminent ransomware attacks.

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