Officials at Ascension, a St. Louis-based, non-profit Catholic health system with facilities in 19 states and the District of Columbia, said Thursday they believe the system was the victim of computer hackers.
In a statement posted to Ascension’s website Thursday, the company said they “detected unusual activity on select technology network systems, which we now believe is due to a cyber security event.”
“At this time we continue to investigate the situation,” the statement read. “We responded immediately, initiated our investigation and activated our remediation efforts. Access to some systems has been interrupted as this process continues.”
While not saying how many patients had been affected, the company acknowledged there has been a disruption to clinical operations and “continues to assess” the impact of that disruption.
“Our care teams are trained for these kinds of disruptions and have initiated procedures to ensure patient care delivery continues to be safe and as minimally impacted as possible,” officials said in the statement.
