ckhamedia

In recognition of Be a Donor Month, local Chatham-Kent residents Tom and Helen Heath shared their story of how someone’s selfless act gave Tom a second chance at life. 💚

Watch this story on our profile under “Be a Donor” highlights to learn about Tom’s experience receiving a heart transplant and Helen’s experience as a caregiver.

To recap on today's update on the recent cyber attack, watch A Message to Our Communities from CEOs from Bluewater Health, Chatham-Kent Health Alliance, Erie Shores HealthCare, Hôtel-Dieu Grace Healthcare and Windsor Regional Hospital.

🔗Click the link in our bio to view.

Bluewater Health, Chatham-Kent Health Alliance, Erie Shores HealthCare, Hôtel-Dieu Grace Healthcare and Windsor Regional Hospital, and our shared service provider TransForm Shared Service Organization, were recently the victims of a ransomware attack that impacted operations as well as certain patient, employee and professional staff data. We have become aware that data connected to the cyber incident has been published. We are reviewing the data to determine its contents.

Working with leading cybersecurity experts, we continue to investigate to determine the exact data impacted. Any individuals whose data was affected by this cyberattack will be promptly notified, in accordance with the law.

We are working closely with law enforcement – including local police departments, Ontario Provincial Police, INTERPOL and FBI – and we have notified all relevant regulatory organizations including the Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner. Our leaders, on advice by our experts that we could not verify claims by the attacker, decided we would not yield to their ransom demands. We are aligned in this position with the governments of 50 nations, including Canada, who have recently pledged to never pay ransom to cybercriminals.

We continue to work around the clock to restore systems, and we expect to have updates related to the restoration of our systems in the coming days.

The hospitals will continue to do their best to contact patients directly in advance if they have a scheduled appointment with one of our hospitals that needs to be rescheduled. If patients do not need emergency care, we ask that they please attend their primary care provider or local clinic.

We understand the impact this incident is having on members of our community, including patients and our employees and professional staff, and deeply apologize for the inconvenience this has caused. We want to thank everyone for their patience during this time.

Due to the fact we have notified and engaged law enforcement as part of a criminal investigation, we remain limited in what we can say. We will provide more information when we are advised we are in a position to do so.

📣 Systems Outage Update:

ERIE ST CLAIR REGION HOSPITALS’ UPDATE ON TECHNICAL ISSUES

Bluewater Health, Chatham-Kent Health Alliance, Erie Shores HealthCare, Hôtel-Dieu Grace Healthcare and Windsor Regional Hospital (the “Hospitals”) are providing an update on the technical issues we are experiencing. A shared service provider used by all our hospitals is experiencing a cyberattack. Unfortunately, this incident is impacting our provision of care in various ways.

For those patients who have care scheduled in the next few days, we will contact you directly, if possible, to reschedule or provide alternate arrangements. Unfortunately, we may not be able to reach all patients, and we request your understanding if we are required to reschedule care in person at our facilities.

Also, we would continue to ask if you are not needing emergency care to attend your primary care provider or local clinic to reduce the impact upon the Hospitals as we work towards addressing these issues and focus on those needing hospital care.

We are investigating the cause and scope of incident, including whether any patient information was affected. Our investigation is ongoing and we will provide further updates, as appropriate. We will not be providing further comment in response to this statement.

📣ATTENTION CK: due to the power outages across Chatham-Kent, all appointments scheduled today at 240 grand have been cancelled. Thank you for your understanding.

Our hearts are heavy in Chatham-Kent this week following a devastating tragedy in Wallaceburg this past weekend.

Our deepest sympathies extend to the families and friends of those we have lost within our community.

We send our love and thoughts to families, friends, first responders, CKHA staff and physicians and all those affected as our community navigates through this challenging period together.

📢 ATTN:

CKHA phone lines have been restored ✅

Thank you to our patients, families and community for your patience as we worked to resolve this issue.