Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago likely won't face an immediate hit to its credit rating from the cyberattack it has been dealing with since late January, according to Fitch Ratings.
The children's hospital took its IT systems down Jan. 31 after being attacked by a "known criminal threat actor," leading to some care disruptions and patient family members' being unable to call or email Lurie directly or access the MyChart patient portal.
Fitch said Feb. 9 it doesn't expect the cyberattack to lower Lurie Children's credit rating, "provided the hospital is able to return to normal operations in the near term." These types of events typically take a few weeks to recover from.
However, "extraordinary degradation" to the organization's balance sheet or a long-term outage could put its long-term AA rating in jeopardy, Fitch said. As the company noted, cyberattacks that "disclose patient information carry the risk of loss of consumer confidence, litigation costs and federal enforcement actions due to regulations around patient confidentiality."