Lurie Children’s Hospital says it has restored its electronic medical records platform after being down for over a month because of a cybersecurity threat.
The records platform that was restored, called Epic, is used by doctors and nurses to manage patients’ charts and coordinate care. The hospital announced Epic’s restoration Monday evening.
Still offline is MyChart, the platform patients use to communicate with providers, access medical records and test results and make appointments, according to a statement on the hospital’s website.
The hospital took its phone, email and electronic systems offline Jan. 31 because of a “criminal threat” from a “known criminal threat actor,” Lurie said in February. It has not explained what the threat was and how it affected its systems. The hospital has remained open and providing care.
Emails to and from external addresses and most of the hospital’s phone lines were restored last month. But Epic and MyChart remained down at the time.
Shortly after taking its systems offline, the hospital opened a call center, though some parents told the Chicago Sun-Times it was difficult to get help through the phone line.
The call center can be reached at 800-543-7362 for non-urgent patient questions, information about scheduled appointments and prescription refill requests. The hotline operates 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday. The hotline is closed Sunday.
“As an academic medical center, our systems are highly complex, and as a result, the restoration process takes time. Working closely with our internal and external experts, we are following a careful process as we work toward full restoration of our systems, which includes verifying and testing each system before we bring them back online,” the website statement reads.
