A ransomware attack against Georgia-based St. Joseph’s/Candler on June 17 spurred network outages and forced clinicians into EHR downtime procedures. Five days later, the workforce is continuing to use paper records for patient appointments. St. Joseph’s/Candler is one of the largest health systems in the state, with two hospitals, home health care services, and specialized outpatient and inpatient care.
An unsecured database of more than a billion search records belonging to CVS Health was accidentally posted online and accessible to the public earlier this spring, ABC News confirms. The non-password protected database was discovered at the end of March by independent cybersecurity researcher Jeremiah Fowler, who then alerted the company to the exposure.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) was suspended from YouTube for seven days on June 11, 2021, for promoting hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19 during a virtual event hosted by the Milwaukee Press Club. A YouTube spokesperson said in a statement, “We removed the video in accordance with our COVID-19 medical misinformation policies, which don’t allow content that encourages people to use Hydroxychloroquine or Ivermectin to treat or prevent the virus.”
Aspen Valley Hospital officials have October 2022 marked on their calendars for the launch of a new patient-records system they say will modernize and improve medical care. The public hospital’s board of directors Monday unanimously approved expenditures of $15.4 million for the introduction of an electronic health record software from Epic Systems.
Every doctor is trailed by ghosts. One of my youngest was a 7-year-old boy I’ll call Oliver. He had an upset stomach, and his mother booked an early morning appointment with their family doctor so that he could still make it in time for class. He seemed to have a routine tummy bug, but something about Oliver’s appearance made his family doctor call the hospital where I was working at the time. He asked if we could monitor the boy for a few hours. We found him a bed.
Only 15 months ago — March 13, 2020 — COVID-19 became a national emergency in the United States. My assumption at the time was that COVID lockdowns could extend as long as five years, the previous speed record for modern vaccine development, with many millions of deaths — a generational cataclysm.