Hospital affected by suspected cybersecurity attack

St. Agnes Ascension Hospital in Southwest Baltimore limited operations Thursday due to a suspected cybersecurity attack.

On Wednesday, the incident forced the hospital to declare a “mini-disaster,” meaning the emergency room should not accept new patients. Approximately 25% of emergency department visits were from emergency responders, while the remainder were spontaneous.

“The hospital has requested that we divert emergency services traffic away from them to other nearby hospitals,” Dr. Ted Delbridge, executive director of the Maryland Institute for Emergency Medical Services Systems.

Ascension issued a statement and wrote:

“We are currently continuing to investigate the situation. We responded immediately, beginning our investigation and activating our remedial actions. Access to some systems has been interrupted while this process continues.”

“The information technology challenges of the last 24 hours have resulted in them having to resort to paper processes. So it takes some time to train people to do things the way they used to do them and makes the hospital a little less efficient. “They usually are,” Delbridge told 11 News.

St. Agnes said it will not turn away any patients, but hospital officials are encouraging people to go to another emergency room for now.

“If I knew their challenges now and had the choice to go somewhere else, I would choose to go somewhere else,” Delbridge said. “If I had a compelling reason to go to St. Agnes, or if it was a real emergency and that was the closest place, I would go there in a heartbeat.”