The extent of cyber attacks on the Department of Health and the HSE will become clear as this week goes on.
Thousands of patients have had their appointments cancelled for the coming week across the country, with urgent care prioritised. (See below for St Luke’s General for Carlow and Kilkenny and here for updates).
A review of all IT systems within the Government is now believed to be taking place.
Sinn Fein’s health spokesperson, Waterford based David Cullinane says “It is a very serious attack, it is one of the most serious in the history of the state and unfortunately it has left many vital health services unable to operate and we’re seeing cancellation of appointments and procedures right across our hospital services so obviously all of that needs to be addressed very, very quickly”.
He adds “We need to establish what happened, we need to establish what weaknesses are in the system and we also need to fix the problem”.
A spokesperson for the Ireland East Hospital Group says “We would ask that patients who do have scheduled appointments for next week to please pay attention to updates on services as hospitals may not be able to access information in order to call and cancel appointment. Updates on service disruption will be posted on the HSE Service Disruption Website Appointment and service updates – HSE IT system cyber attack – HSE.ie
Updates will also be posted on Hospital Twitter accounts and on individual hospital websites where possible. We encourage all patients to check on these sites for up-to-date service disruption and cancellations for IEHG hospitals. Services and patients who do attend the hospital for appointments, we ask for their patience as all services are being done manually and information is paper based, therefore there may be delays in services that are able to continue.
Emergency Services remain open across the Ireland East Hospital Group but remain extremely busy.
We ask that patients consider their care options and only attend the ED in an emergency. Non urgent patients may expect long delays in being seen.”
Regarding Carlow and Kilkenny, but here’s where we stand this morning:
