Recovery from cyberattack continues

Piles of paper that fill a room at Windsor Regional Hospital (WRH) show how much work has been done, and what still needs to be scanned into the system as restoration efforts continue at WRH following a cyberattack over month ago.

“We're happy to see sun on the horizon and hopefully we'll be getting out of this soon and being able to provide better care to our communities,” said Karen Riddell, Chief Nursing Executive.

For the past six days, WRH has been using their electronic system to register and discharge patients who were admitted and discharged during the period following the attack.

On Thursday, the hospital began to register current patients and enter current treatment plans and orders.

“We are planning to go live with our electronic patient health record on December the 13ths” Riddell said.

These are big steps forward for WRH and a positive sign for the other four hospitals affected by the cyberattack on Oct. 23.

“We can see the light now and move towards it and get more of our applications up and running one by one,” said hospital CEO David Musyj.

Riddell said full restoration of their system is ongoing. Pharmacy is about a month away from being electronically integrated into the health record.

Lab results will be integrated within the next two weeks.

Diagnostic Imaging, or PACS system, also needs more time, according to Riddell, “That's a really important system we need back up and running and we are hopeful that will be back up in just another week or two.”

MRI’s are expected to ramp up in January with CT scans in February. Riddell said there is a backlog of semi-urgent cases that will affect those waiting for non-urgent scans.

“Once our PACS is up and running, we are concentrating on our P3 backlog which are those semi urgent cases typically cancer related cases or more urgent diseases that need more immediate follow up,” he said.

Riddell estimates it’ll take 10 weeks to clear the backlog of semi-urgent cases.