Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare Diverts EMS Amid “IT Security Issue”

UPDATE 2/6/2023 - This article has been updated to reflect recent developments.

Florida-based Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare (TMH) is actively responding to “an IT security issue that began affecting the IT system late Thursday night,” a notice on the health system’s website states.

“As a precautionary measure, we have taken our IT systems offline. The good news is that our IT department quickly detected the issue and is working proactively to resolve it,” the notice continued.

The organization has diverted some EMS patients and will only accept Level 1 traumas from its immediate service area. TMH has also had to cancel and reschedule all non-emergency surgical and outpatient procedures.

“We are reviewing each of our IT systems now, prioritizing them and bringing them back online one-by-one. We do not currently have a timeline for how long this will take as this is an emerging situation, but we will continue to provide updates on TMH.ORG,” the hospital said in a Friday morning update.

TMH said it has notified law enforcement of the incident and is continuing to work with them.

“Patient safety is always our number-one priority,” TMH stated. “We apologize for inconvenience or delays.”

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As of a February 5 notice, TMH was still working to respond to the IT security incident. TMH is still operating under downtime procedures, using paper documentation, and diverting EMS patients. Non-emergency surgical and outpatient procedures scheduled for Monday, February 6 have been canceled an rescheduled.

However, TMH physician partner practices remain operational and will see patients as scheduled on Monday. In addition, TMH's labor and delivery services remain operational. 

"We prepare for situations like this and have implemented a series of backup and downtime protocols – including relying on paper documentation – to enable our colleagues to continue to provide safe, high-quality care to patients," the latest update stated.

"Our teams are working around the clock in collaboration with outside consultants to investigate the cause of the event and safely restore all computer systems as quickly as possible. IT security events take time to investigate and resolve. Our investigation is ongoing and, as is typical in such situations, we expect it will take some time to determine exactly what happened."

This article will be updated as the situation develops.