1,000 appointments per day cancelled in Galway due to ransomware attack

Galway patients already lingering on the longest waiting lists in the country were hit with more heartbreak this week with the blanket cancellation of appointments following the cyber attack on the HSE’s computer network.

An estimated 1,500 outpatient appointments were lost each day across the six hospitals in the regional Saolta Healthcare Group, with 900 patients per day facing cancellations in the two city hospitals, and an estimated 130 patients impacted in Portiuncula in Ballinasloe.

The cancellations will continue until Friday, when the situation is reviewed. But Saolta Chief Operations Officer, Ann Costgrove, speculated that it may spill into next week as technicians work to fix infiltrated IT systems.

“It’s very difficult to say at the moment [how long the disruption will continue]. I know people are working night and day to get the systems back up. This malware attack seems to have been – well we know it was – extremely serious so it will be a cautious approach,” she told the Connacht Tribune.

All outpatient clinics, diagnostics, including x-rays, CT scans, MRI appointments and cardiac investigations, will remain cancelled for at least this week.

Endoscopy and radiotherapy services are also cancelled while all elective inpatient and day case procedures are also cut.

“A small number of procedures may go ahead and in this event, patients will be contacted directly.”

Anybody attending the Emergency Departments at University Hospital Galway and Portiuncula were warned to expect significant delays as staff grapple with manual records.
This is a shortened preview version of this article. To read the rest of the story, see this week’s Connacht Tribune. You can buy a digital edition HERE.