Hospitals Continue to Suffer Impacts of CommonSpirit IT Security Incident

Hospitals across the country are experiencing IT outages, delays, and appointment cancellations as CommonSpirit Health works to resolve an IT security incident.

As previously reported, CommonSpirit Health confirmed that it has been suffering IT outages as a result of an unspecified IT security incident that began on or around October 3. The incident has impacted multiple facilities within the health system, forcing some hospitals to take their EHR systems offline. The incident impacted CommonSpirit itself, not its EHR vendor.

In 2019, CHI Health and Dignity Health merged to form CommonSpirit Health. CommonSpirit is one of the largest nonprofit healthcare systems in the US, with more than 1,000 care sites and 140 hospitals in 21 states.

It is unclear at this time how many of CommonSpirit’s locations were impacted by the incident, but multiple CHI Health locations have reported impacts from the incident.

At the time of publication, CHI Health’s website stated that its facilities were following existing protocols for system outages and had taken certain systems offline temporarily.

“As a result of this issue, we have canceled or rescheduled some patient appointments,” CHI Health’s website notice continued.

“If your appointment was not able to be rescheduled immediately, you will be contacted when we are able to reschedule your appointment.”

In addition, CHI Health temporarily suspended access to its patient portal and is following offline processes to manage prescriptions.

“Patients who have a prescription on file with a pharmacy can continue to fill/refill their prescription. If a patient is out of refills for a medication, the patient should contact their pharmacy first and the pharmacy will contact the prescriber to obtain a new prescription with additional refills,” the notice explained.

“CHI providers have the ability to write new prescriptions for patients who may require a new medicine.”

MercyOne Central Iowa said that the incident was impacting its online scheduling capabilities. Other hospitals across Iowa, Nebraska, Washington, and Tennessee have reported similar impacts.