Tara Jeffrey
All patients seen at Bluewater Health or predecessor institutions since Feb., 1992 are believed to be impacted by a devastating cyberattack, officials said Thursday.
In its latest update, the hospital confirmed that a stolen database report contained information on approximately 267,000 patients dating back to Feb. 24, 1992.
All patients who registered for treatment at any of the following institutions since that date are believed to be affected: Bluewater Health, Lambton Hospitals Group, Charlotte Eleanor Englehart Hospital, Sarnia General Hospital, and St. Joseph’s Hospital.
“Bluewater Health has also determined that social insurance numbers (SIN) were included for approximately 20,000 patients,” a news release stated. “Bluewater Health will directly notify all those whose SIN was included in the database report, and will provide those individuals with two years of complimentary credit monitoring.”
The database report may have included the following information: name; address; contact information; date of birth; basic demographic information; reason for visit; and general notes on prior registrations.
Bluewater Health appears to be the hardest hit of a group of southwestern Ontario hospitals targeted in a crippling cyberattack as officials announced this month that data on some 5.6 million patient visits had been stolen.
The group of hospitals - Chatham-Kent Health Alliance, Erie Shores HealthCare, Hôtel-Dieu Grace Healthcare and Windsor Regional Hospital — all have some degree of patient and employee information affected.
On Wednesday, the hospitals provided an update on the ‘recovery process, stating that restoration is expected to be complete by mid-December.
Patients are being reminded to bring their health cards, all pertinent health information and up-to-date medications list to hospital as physicians may not have access to important information, including past patient records or medical history; current mediation lists; reports from other clinicians involved in care; and pre-admission workups.