HSHS, Prevea elective and non-elective procedures can be scheduled as health system recovers from cyberattack
Prevea and HSHS patients can schedule procedures again as the health system continues to investigate the cyber attack that caused communications systems go down for over a week.
Hospitals and emergency departments are open and accepting patients. Appointments can be made for both elective and non-elective procedures, the health system announced late Monday.
Prevea and HSHS website, internet, phone, and computer systems went down Aug. 27.
In a video posted Friday night, Damond Boatwright, the president and CEO of the health care system in 14 communities in Wisconsin and Illinois, said the ause of the outage was a cybersecurity incident
The health system brought in "third-party experts" to bring their systems back online. An investigation is ongoing into the cybersecurity incident.
"HSHS and Prevea leaders, clinicians and staff continue to work around the clock to restore the clinical, administrative and communications systems that were impacted by the recent cybersecurity incident," the health system said in the update Monday.
Brain surgery is on hold for Seymour man
Brian Stehsel is still waiting on his brain surgery to determine if he has another tumor.
About a year and a half ago, Stehsel, 43, found out he had Stage 4 colon cancer that metastasized to his brain.
On Aug. 30, he was supposed to have surgery to find out if another tumor or radiation necrosis was impacting his symptoms. Brian and his wife, Aimee, waited the day before for the standard call from the hospital regarding preparation for the surgery. But Aimee heard there was an outage and decided to message Prevea on Facebook to see what her husband should do.
She got a message back that they should expect a call the same day regarding next steps, but they never heard from the health system. So Aimee and Brian decided to drive into Green Bay from Seymour to their clinic instead. They were told the technology needed to perform the surgery was down and that they would be called when there was more information.
But Aimee and Brian have not heard anything since then.
“We’re still in limbo,” Aimee Stehsel said.
While Brian waits, he struggles with double vision and has to use a walker to get around the house. While waiting a few more days for surgery may not detrimentally worsen his symptoms, the delay means the longer he has to sit with his symptoms that prevent Brian and his wife from going anywhere.
Aimee and Brian are going to wait until Friday to hear from Prevea and HSHS before making another drive to the clinic for answers.
“The sooner we can get those symptoms under control, the better,” Aimee Stehsel said.
Most of the hospital and clinic phone lines are back in service, but complete restoration of the internet and computer systems will take more time, HSHS and Prevea said.
Billing services are still suspended as the outage continues. Prevea and HSHS patients are not charged late fees.
To contact Prevea, HSHS
Prevea Health
Main phone line 920-496-4700
Family medicine or internal medicine department for adult patient care, call 920-431-1810
Prevea Surgery Center -920-272-3648
HSHS Wisconsin hospitals:
HSHS St. Vincent Hospital, Green Bay 920-433-0111
HSHS St. Mary’s Hospital Medical Center, Green Bay 920-498-4200
HSHS St. Nicholas Hospital, Sheboygan 920-459-8300
HSHS St. Clare Memorial Hospital, Oconto Falls 920-846-3444
For more updates, go to www.prevea.com/updates.
This story will be updated.
Benita Mathew is a health and science reporter for the USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin. Contact her at bmathew@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @benita_mathew.
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Patients can schedule procedures after cyberattack on HSHS, Prevea
