Lurie Children's Hospital restoring MyChart patient portal after January cyberattack
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Lurie Children's Hospital began reactivating its MyChart patient portal on Friday, more than a month after a cyberattack at the end of January.
Hospital officials said patient scheduling, e-check-in, provider messaging, and medical refill requests were coming online on Friday, with bill pay expected to go online in the coming days.
Telemedicine appointments are also available again through MyChart. Lurie said patients should refer to email and text message reminders and log into their MyChart account for information about any upcoming telemedicine appointments.
The hospital warned that, with an expected spike in MyChart activity as the system is restored, patients could face service disruptions while using both the website and app.
"MyChart was not updated during the system downtime. We are actively working to update the information available in MyChart with the information collected during the downtime. We do not have an estimate when this work will be complete, and we will provide updates as this process progresses. We thank our patient families for their continued patience," Lurie officials said in a statement.
A cyberattack led the hospital to take its phone, email, and other systems offline on Jan. 31 – and has caused weeks of disruptions to its regular operations.
The hospital's internal phone records and phone lines were restored early last week.
Last month, the hospital confirmed that officials were aware of claims that Russian hacking group "Rhysida" ransomware was behind the attack. Lurie added they continue to work with police and security experts and cannot share further details on the investigation, and on Thursday confirmed they are now looking into claims Rhysida sold data they claim was taken from the hospital's systems.
A post on the ransomware gang's "data leak" advertises a price of 60 bitcoin - equivalent to about $3.4 million - in exchange for "exclusive, unique, and impressive" data from the hospital. It even gives an ominous time frame of "7 days to seize the clock."
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said other healthcare institutions need to be alert.
