WASHINGTON D.C., DC — Staff with the major hospital chain Universal Health Services began noticing over the weekend major IT issues with their hospital computers. Reports surfaced that some staff had to resort to pen and paper to file patient information.
Universal Health Services didn't immediately reply to TEGNA for comment, but a statement on their website reads that UHS began working with their IT security partners to "restore IT operations as quickly as possible."
As of Monday at 10:45 a.m. Eastern, UHS said that their facilities were "using their established back-up processes including offline documentation methods. Patient care continues to be delivered safely and effectively."
According to a UHS spokesperson, as of Monday, there did not appear to be any patient or employee data which had been "accessed, copied or otherwise compromised," a company statement read.
NBC News reported, citing a source familiar with the company's response to the security issue, that the cause of the outage “looks and smells like ransomware,” and was reportedly being considered as a possible cyberattack.
According to NBC News, they spoke to two Universal Health Services nurses who wished to remain anonymous, who said that the issues began over the weekend. Ransomware attacks are common on weekends, as IT personal are sparse in many companies on those days.
One Arizona nurse with a UHS hospital in that state said, “the computer just started shutting down on its own.” The nurse said the UHS medication system is all online, "so that's been difficult.”
In North Dakota, a UHS hospital nurse reportedly said computers began by slowing down and eventually would not even turn on early Sunday. The nurse told NBC at that time, all of their computers were completely down.
