Capital Health’s New Jersey Hospitals Affected by Cyberattack
Capital Health has launched an investigation into a cybersecurity incident that caused it to experience a network outage earlier in the week. Law enforcement has been notified and third-party cybersecurity experts have been engaged to determine the extent and scope of the incident.
Capital Health operates two hospitals in New Jersey, Capital Health Medical Center – Hopewell and Capital Health Regional Medical Center in Trenton, as well as an outpatient facility in Hamilton Township. Capital Health’s IT team took immediate action to contain the incident and prevent further unauthorized access to its network and it is currently working around the clock to bring systems and data back online.
Capital Health is operating under established downtime protocols while access to electronic systems is not possible, with patient information recorded on paper charts. Capital Health said care continues to be provided to patients and its emergency rooms have remained open, although it was necessary to make some changes to elective surgical and procedure schedules, with some patients’ surgeries delayed, although the impact on surgical schedules is now minimal. Capital Health said outpatient radiology is still unavailable and neurophysiology and non-invasive cardiology testing is being rescheduled. All surgeries are being prioritized based on urgency and the critical nature of the patient’s condition.
Capital Health was unable to provide a timescale for the recovery process but anticipates operating on limited systems for at least the next week. The nature of the attack has not been disclosed and, at this stage of the investigation, it is too early to tell to what extent, if any, patient data has been affected. Capital Health said no evidence of unauthorized data access or data theft has been identified at this time. Further information on the incident will be released as the investigation progresses.
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This is the second major cyberattack to affect New Jersey hospitals in the past week. On Thanksgiving Day, Hackensack Meridian Health confirmed that it was experiencing a network outage that affected two of its hospitals – Hackensack Meridian Mountainside Medical Center in Montclair and Hackensack Meridian Pascack Valley Medical Center in Westwood. Both hospitals are operated under a joint venture with Ardent Health Services. which experienced a ransomware attack last week that affected several of its hospitals.
