A systems outage at Lurie Children’s Hospital that began Wednesday is a cybersecurity matter, the hospital said.
“We are taking this very seriously, are investigating with the support of leading experts, and are working in collaboration with law enforcement agencies. As part of our response to this matter, we have taken network systems offline,” the hospital said in a statement Thursday night.
The hospital is open and providing care, the statement said. The outage is affecting phone, email and electronic systems.
A call center was established Friday evening to help patient families and community providers. Calls are accepted at (800) 543-7362 Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Saturday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.; and Sunday, 8 a.m. to noon.
Call center workers can help with non-urgent patient requests and questions, prescription refills, and provide information about scheduled appointments.
That might have helped Jennifer Sabourin avoid a frustrating situation earlier this week.
Her 9-year-old daughter was to undergo an endoscopy on Wednesday and have surgery in three weeks. But she didn’t find out until after she and her daughter drove to the hospital from their west-suburban home that the appointment had been canceled.
“I was so angry,” she said Thursday.
Her daughter had fasted Tuesday night to prepare, and missed school on Wednesday, and Sabourin had taken the day off work.
“I was mostly frustrated that there was no way to contact patients to say we want you to be aware of what’s happening,” she added. “I will be even more frustrated if her surgery gets affected because of this.”
— Lurie Children's (@LurieChildrens) February 2, 2024
Sabourin said she worries about privacy and a data breach, but her main concern is that the hospital is not yet functioning as normal.
“What surprises me is how long it is taking to resolve the issue,” she said Friday. “The effects of this breach are going to last long after the network is restored.”
Natalie Davis, who lives in Michigan, decided not to make the two-hour drive Thursday for an appointment after seeing parents on social media saying their appointments had been canceled.
“Obviously, we understood what was happening was out of their control, but it is still just a little frustrating,” Davis told the Sun-Times via Facebook Messenger on Thursday.
Davis said the appointment was scheduled eight months ago for her 9-month-old son, who was born with right-sided complete tibial hemimelia, a condition where a child is born with a shorter shinbone or without one.
“It would have been helpful if there was someone answering questions people were commenting,” she said.
Jason Castillo’s 7-month-old daughter was supposed to have heart surgery on Wednesday, he said. She was waiting for anesthesia when the surgery was called off, he said.
“It’s disappointing to know that such a respected and prestigious institution didn’t have the proper security in place,” he said.
He said his daughter’s surgery luckily wasn’t an emergency, but he wished initial communications from the hospital regarding the outage were clearer.
“We wanted this surgery done and to move forward with our lives past the surgery, but we’re very lucky in a lot of ways that we don’t have a life or death situation right now,” he said.
Contributing: Kade Heather
