O'FALLON, Ill — Nearly three weeks after a cyberattack on Hospital Sisters Health System caused outages that impacted clinical operations and communications at its Illinois hospitals and clinics, HSHS St. Elizabeth's Hospital Convenient Care and St. John's Community Pharmacy have reopened.
The HSHS outage began on Aug. 27 following a cybersecurity incident. Doctors and nurses were forced to provide care for over a week without internet or phones.
The health system's electronic health records platform went back online Tuesday, allowing patients to once again schedule appointments online and send messages to their healthcare providers. Phone lines were restored last week.
Convenient Care, located in O'Fallon, Illinois, was forced to close on Sept. 2 due to the system outage. It reopened Friday morning under normal operating hours, according to a post on St. Elizabeth Hospital's Facebook page. The facility provides walk-in care for patients with minor illnesses, sprains, strains and other issues that require immediate assistance but aren't serious enough to go to the emergency room.
St. John's Community Pharmacy, located in Springfield, Illinois, reopened Thursday, according to an update from the hospital system. It closed during the HSHS outage due to the inability to process or fill digital prescription orders. During the closure, some hospitals were providing patients with written prescriptions to bring to alternative pharmacies to be filled.
To read the full update from HSHS along with answers to frequently asked questions, visit hshsupdates.org.
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