Quick Take
A network outage shutting down Watsonville Community Hospital’s internet connection and its electronic systems was caused by a cyberattack, hospital spokesperson Nancy Gere said Friday. The network outage occurred last week, and is expected to last several more days as an investigation is ongoing.
Watsonville Community Hospital’s multiday network outage was caused by a cyberattack, hospital officials confirmed Friday evening.
The network outage began last Friday, shutting down the hospital’s internet connection and its electronic systems used for patient charts and prescription notifications.
The outage was still ongoing as of Friday evening and is expected to last for several more days, hospital spokesperson Nancy Gere said. Until the network is back online, the hospital will continue to work on a paper system.
The investigation, conducted by third-party information technology specialists, has not yet determined if any personal information has been compromised, she said.
Gere could not confirm what type of cyberattack the hospital was experiencing, including whether it was a ransomware attack, as the investigation is ongoing. A ransomware attack is where hackers prevent victims from accessing their files, systems or networks and demand payment in exchange for restoring access.
The hospital’s emergency, inpatient and outpatient services will remain open, but patients can expect delays in the emergency room, Gere said. Since the hospital is using paper patient charts, lab and X-ray requests are being submitted manually. There are additional staff whose main job is to hand-deliver lab orders to the emergency room, she said.
“The paper process by nature is one that promulgates delays,” Gere said.
The hospital’s IT systems were a focus of scrutiny in a lawsuit filed last December by the liquidation trustee managing the hospital’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. The hospital was purchased out of bankruptcy in 2022 and is now publicly owned by the Pajaro Valley Health Care District.
The lawsuit by Jeremy Rosenthal of Force 10 Partners alleges that the hospital’s previous owners contracted a company that had no prior experience providing full-service IT management to install and maintain the hospital’s internet and computer infrastructure.
“As a result of this grossly negligent adventure, the hospital’s network was consistently unreliable and was never good enough to provide a minimally acceptable level of performance,” the complaint alleges.
The network’s poor quality resulted in a deficient-ridden medical records system and billing issues, the suit claims. The executives, Rosenthal alleges, also installed an “untested” cloud-based electronic medical record system that further caused “disruptions, operational glitches and failures.”
Gere said the hospital has updated individual IT systems in the past, but its electronic health record system — the largest IT system used by the hospital and one of the systems impacted by the outage — dates back to the hospital’s previous owners.
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