Curative radiation treatments are now back to full capacity at Windsor Regional Cancer Centre in the wake of a ransomware attack late last month on five hospitals in southwestern Ontario.
Officials say Windsor Regional Hospital along with IT experts, radiation treatment platform providers and its expert WRH clinical staff has been able to safely resume full operation of curative radiation treatments as part of the overall IT restoration plan.
A cyberattack began on Oct. 23, 2023, impacting services at Windsor Regional Hospital, Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare, Erie Shores Healthcare in Leamington, Bluewater Health in Sarnia, and Chatham-Kent Health Alliance.
As a result of the attack, patients receiving care in Windsor were referred to other cancer centres.
Officials at Windsor Regional Hospital say they will continue to work with other cancer centres that provided support and the individual patients who have been referred to other centres. It will be in the best interest of patients to start and complete their radiation treatment at the centres they have been referred to both for clinical continuity and to avoid any additional delays.
Windsor Regional Hospital President and CEO, David Musyj, says the Ontario cancer system is a robust and specialized one, as it was even before the attack.
"Just like Windsor Regional Cancer is a cancer program for our region and people come from all over the region and outside of the region to come here, there are certain specialities and specialists across the province that will result in patients needing to travel, and continuing to travel, to see focused specialists depending on their clinical needs," he says.
Musyj says this emphasizes the robustness of the Ontario cancer system.
"So the Windsor Regional Cancer program will work with patients, it's provincial partners, to determine the best for a particular patient and their cancer needs," he says.
Patients requiring systemic (chemotherapy and related services) are being treated both within WRH, and plans have been established to access additional capacity in other centres, if needed.
Any referrals to any other centres requires the referral first to be made to the Windsor Regional Hospital Cancer Centre to ensure seamless clinical care and appropriate coordination.
Bluewater Health in Sarnia was hit the hardest during the ransomware attack on the hospitals and their shared service provider TransForm Shared Service Organization
Bluewater Health had information stolen that covered approximately 5.6 million patient visits made by approximately 267,000 unique patients.
Windsor Regional Hospital reports a very limited portion of a shared drive used by hospital staff was accessed by the attackers.
The preliminary review indicates that in the shared drive that was breached, some patients were identified by name only or some with a brief summary of their medical condition but not with any patient charts/electronic medical records.
While it does appear that information pertaining to employees was affected to some degree, WRH has reached the preliminary conclusion that no employee or professional staff social insurance numbers or banking information were affected.
Hôtel-Dieu Grace Healthcare confirmed the theft of an employee database report containing information about 1,396 individuals employed by HDGH as of Nov. 4, 2022 and some former employees.
If you were employed by HDGH on that date, HDGH believes that your data was taken, including name, social insurance number, and basic pay rate. This database report does not appear to include professional staff or volunteers.
A band of cyber-criminals called ‘Daixin Team’ is claiming to be the group responsible for the cyber attack but a ransom was not paid.