Lurie Children's Hospital Systems Coming Back Online After Cyberattack

CHICAGO — Two weeks after a cyberattack shut down access to electronic communication and medical records at one of the region's largest children's hospitals, services have begun to be restored.

Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital administrators shut down its phone, email and medical records systems on Jan. 31 after discovering a network breach by a "known criminal threat actor."

As of Wednesday, Lurie Children's representatives said its email system and most of its phone lines were operational again, although the MyChart patient portal remained offline. Hospital staff have set up a dedicated call center to offer support to patients..

Hospital officials last week told reporters they have been working with the FBI and other law enforcement agencies to investigate the hack.

They have not disclosed whether it was a ransomware attack, whereby cybercriminals extort individuals or organizations by demanding payment, usually in the form of cryptocurrency, to restore access to their data.

The number of global ransomware attacks in 2023 rose by 85 percent compared to 2022, cybersecurity firm NCC Group reported last month. The health care industry was among the three most-targeted sectors for the months of October and November.

In the U.S. the number of hospital systems targeted by ransomware attacks rose from 25 in 2022 to 46 in 2023, affected 141 individual hospitals, according to a report from Emisoft Malware Lab.

Matt Hull, the global head of threat intelligence at NCC Group, said the data shows the importance of mitigating the risk with the right preventative measures.

“Closing 2023 with over 4,000 global ransomware attacks reflects the sharp rise of cybercriminal activity compared with 2022," Hull said.

"Over the year, we’ve seen the development of sophisticated attack methods, allowing both new and old threat groups to exploit vulnerabilities of victims across a range of sectors and, in particular, present threats to healthcare," he said, "where we’ve seen notable successful attacks over the last 12 months with vast volumes of data being compromised."

Last June, a Bureau County hospital permanently ceased operations, with administrators of St. Margaret's Health in Spring Valley citing a ransomware attack among that factors that forced the closure, NBC News reported. Officials said a 2021 attack blocked the hospital from submitting claims to Medicare, Medicaid or insurance companies and triggered a financial meltdown.

Though the attack on Lurie Children's does not threaten its continuing financial survival, it has disrupted care for some of the more than a quarter million patients it treats every year.

Parent John Castillo's 6-month-old daughters had a scheduled heart surgery canceled, he told the Associated Press, after her surgeon said he was uncomfortable going ahead with it due to the cyberattack.

“We’ve already been kind of in limbo with our lives waiting for the surgery, knowing we’d need to drop everything and care for her until she’s healthy again,” Castillo said. “We just have no idea when it is going to be rescheduled, if we’d need to switch hospitals. And we really don’t want to do that.”