The two Ohio Valley Health Services & Education Corp. hospitals that fell victim to ransomware Nov. 23 aren't paying a ransom to remedy the attack, officials told The Times Leader.
"We are not paying a ransom," Karin Janiszewski, director of marketing and public relations for the two hospitals — the East Ohio Regional Hospital in Harper's Ferry, Ohio, and the Ohio Valley Medical Center in Wheeling, W.Va. — told the publication. "It is not necessary because we have redundant security and ransomware was only able to make it through our first line of security and they caught the attempted attack quickly."
As of Nov. 28, the two hospitals are still on a so-called "yellow diversion," meaning emergency medical services can call into an emergency room, at which point staff will let them know if it's a case the facility can take, OVMC CEO Daniel Dunmyer told the publication. Officials hope the ERs will be fully operational soon.
As part of their work to remedy systems in the wake of the attack, the hospitals' IT teams are rebuilding the front of their software programs, including systems to read radiology and CT scans. "That interface should be fully functional by the end of [Nov. 27] and we can go off of diversion in the ERs," Ms. Janiszewski told The Times Leader.
Patient information was not compromised in the ransomware attack, according to the hospitals.