Nearly two and a half months after a cybersecurity breach took down Palomar Health Medical Group’s computer systems, the well being system mentioned Thursday it has made “important progress” towards restoring its programs to full performance.
PHMG mentioned on its web site that medical information, phone and on-line affected person portal programs have been restored, however some programs are nonetheless not absolutely operational.
According to PHMG, the intrusion came about between April 23 and May 5. The hackers accessed sufferers’ names, beginning dates, Social Security numbers, medical histories and medical insurance data.
For Kenneth Rose, the information got here too late: He had already been transferred to a different medical group.
The veteran returned to San Diego from Idaho in April, and Medicare assigned him a major care doctor at PHMG. He mentioned that at his first appointment on May 6, the day after the intrusion took down the computer systems, he was requested to fill out all of his paperwork manually, though he had already finished so on-line.
Due to the ability outage, I do not know if my data was entered into the system.
“I’m not even certain I’m of their system,” Rose mentioned. “If I known as immediately, even when I acquired by, I do not know in the event that they’d even know who I’m.”
Rose has a background in software program help, and thought the pc issues can be resolved inside a number of days, however when the outages lasted for weeks, he realized it was severe.
“My first thought was, ‘This appears to be like like a ransomware assault,'” he says. “If it has been locked for this lengthy, which means somebody has your information, or they’ve locked your information they usually’re not going to launch it except you pay them.”
Palomar Health has not but disclosed what triggered the outage past a cybersecurity breach, and the well being system didn’t reply to an e-mail searching for remark.
For Rose, the actual drawback got here when he tried to get referrals to see a neurologist and a heart specialist — he has Parkinson’s illness.
“About two weeks after I booked, I known as, however the cellphone system was laborious to make use of and I did not know how one can get by to the precise particular person, so I left a message on an everyday answering machine – I believe it was an everyday mailbox,” he mentioned. “Then a couple of week later I acquired a name from them they usually have been like, ‘Hey, we do not know while you have been coming, who you noticed, what you want,’ so I used to be just a little involved.”
At that time, he went to the VA to get the care he wanted, although he mentioned he initially most popular Medicare as a result of it was faster.
Medicare is at present assigning him to a brand new medical group, which does not take impact till Aug. 1.