One of the hospitals crippled by a criminal cyberattack is striving to be back online.
Windsor Regional Hospital provided an update to its board of directors at its monthly meeting on Thursday. WRH was one of five southwestern Ontario hospital systems hit with a massive ransomware attack six weeks ago.
Chief Operating Officer and Chief Nursing Executive Karen Riddell said the process of returning to an online system began last week.
"We have started, as of December 2, both registering and discharging patients in our electronic system that were admitted and discharged during the downtime period," said Riddell. "This is necessary to be able to build onto those charts."
Riddell said that as of Thursday, the hospitals began registering patients and treatment plants into the system, with the target date of December 13 for having patient records fully back online.
Showing a photo of the mountains of paperwork staff were forced to use due to the downtime, Riddell jokingly apologized to Mother Earth and added that the work does not stop there.
"We have hundreds of different systems that integrate into the electronic health records, so some of them will not be fully electronic or integrated," said Riddell.
The damage caused by the cyberattack was widespread and had varying degrees not only at WRH, but also at Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare and Erie Shores Healthcare in Windsor-Essex, the Chatham-Kent Health Alliance, and Bluewater Health in Sarnia. Some confidential patient records were posted online, and a class-action lawsuit has been filed against the five hospitals and their shared information service provider.
WRH's other concern raised by the ransomware attack has been a backlog of diagnostic imaging. There is currently no backlog for P1 and P2 cases, which are for emergent life-threatening issues and urgent in-patient care.
Riddell says P3 cases, which are semi-urgent, are back up and running for MRIs and CTs with a ten-week timeframe to clear the backlog. P4, though, is the least urgent form of diagnostic care.
"We have not been completing any P4 CTs or MRIs, and we don't expect to ramp up for MRI until January 2024 or for CTs until February 2024," said Riddell.
The current provincial waiting period for a P4 imaging appointment is 90 days.
Windsor Regional Hospital says all doctor's offices have been notified of the wait times. Patients with questions about a referral may call the Diagnostic Imaging department at (519) 254-1727.