Cookeville Regional Medical Center administration and Information System teams confirmed Wednesday that the hospital’s technical outage was due to a ransomware attack.
“The IS security team has been here 24 hours a day working. We take this matter seriously, and we are working with outside IT experts to investigate the issue,” said Tim McDermott, CRMC chief information officer, in a prepared statement shared with the Chronicle.
“We greatly appreciate everyone’s patience during this process,” he added.
CRMC’s Information System team reported Sunday they had discovered unusual activity disrupting some of the Cookeville hospital’s computer systems.
Federal law enforcement officials were notified, and external security experts have been retained to assist in the investigation and recovery that has had the IS security team “working around the clock to restore the affected systems and services,” hospital administrators said in the prepared statement.
“The privacy and security of every patient’s information is one of CRMC’s top priorities,” the statement continued. “If the investigation determines that any information has been accessed or acquired without authorization, CRMC will notify those affected as soon as possible in accordance with applicable law.”
McDermott vowed to share additional information as appropriate with patients as the ongoing investigation continues.
“There are many questions all of us would like to know the answers to, and those will be answered in time we do believe,” said Cookeville Regional Medical Center CEO Buffy Key. “Right now, I can share that our staff have been phenomenal in working to care for our patients.”
She added, “Patient care has not been affected by this outage even though technology, scheduling, etc., have been slow because of the event. Our team has stayed grounded in making sure we see patients and care for them. That is always the priority.”