Cyberattack takes down systems at Jones Memorial Hospital

Jones Memorial Hospital, a 70-bed acute care facility in Wellsville, N.Y., says it was the victim of a cyberattack that forced some of its computer systems offline.

The rural hospital, located in southwestern New York State, announced on Wednesday that it is in the final stages of bringing the systems back online and expects to resume standard operations over the next few days.

The organization did not specify the exact nature of the outage of its systems.

“Work on the impacted systems is nearly complete, and Jones clinicians are working with our IT team to conduct system checks prior to resuming full operational status,” states the announcement. “We have also worked with Meditech, our vendor for patient electronic medical record systems. The leadership of Jones appreciates their dedication and hard work in helping to restore our systems.”

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In the meantime, the hospital says it has implemented standard computer downtime procedures—which the staff regularly trains and prepares for—including the practice of “manually entering information into patient medical charts while some of our systems are offline.”

While its systems remain down, the hospital is also asking that patients using its services and clinics bring their health insurance cards, complete medications lists and any available medical histories with them for their visits.

“We continue to believe that no patient financial or medical information has been compromised, and have been in contact with law enforcement and the New York State Department of Health since the downtime began” several days ago, said the announcement. “This issue is isolated to Jones Memorial Hospital’s computer systems.”