Prevea, HSHS outage due to 'cybersecurity incident'; phone lines for family medicine, surgery center working

Benita Mathew and Kevin Dittman, Green Bay Press-Gazette
Updated ·2 min read
Leaders of HSHS and Prevea Health announced a "cybersecurity incident" caused the health system's communications systems to go down for a week.

GREEN BAY - Hospital Sisters Health System announced Friday night that a "cybersecurity incident" was the cause of Prevea and HSHS's website, internet, photo and computer systems being down since Sunday.

Damond Boatwright, the president and CEO of the health care system in 14 communities in Wisconsin and Illinois, said they are receiving assistance from third-party experts and law enforcement.

"I am relieved to report we are making progress," Boatwright said in a video message. "We’re bringing back critical systems and have restored many of our internal communication applications, like email and messaging. Our IT colleagues, along with our outside experts, are working nonstop to fully restore our remaining offline hospital systems as critically as possible so we can all return to normal operations."

Some individual phone lines, including Prevea's main line, are back up and running, but some patients said earlier Friday their calls aren't going through because of the large backup.

On Thursday afternoon, the health system said it will be accepting only cash or checks for any hospital bills or payments while the outage continues, but the health provider said it will not be calling or emailing patients requesting a payment.

The cause of the outage is still unknown as the investigation continues.

"We recognize how challenging this situation has been for everyone and know how hard our colleagues and providers are working to continue caring for our patients," Prevea said. "Be assured, we train and prepare our colleagues for these types of outages."

As of Tuesday, Prevea Health's main phone line was again available at 920-496-4700, though the health system said patients should expect a delay due to a large call volume.

The Prevea Surgery Center can now be reached, too, at 920-272-3648. The family medicine or internal medicine department for adult patient care is available at 920-431-1810.

People can also contact each HSHS hospital at the following numbers:

  • 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

  • HSHS Sacred Heart Hospital, Eau Claire, 715-717-4121

  • HSHS St. Joseph’s Hospital, Chippewa Falls, 715-723-1811

Updates and any information regarding the outage are posted on Prevea's website daily.

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.

More: HSHS and Prevea Health internet outage continues Wednesday in Green Bay, elsewhere

This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Prevea, HSHS outage continues Friday; more phone lines are now working