Ascension Saint Agnes declares ‘Mini Disaster,’ pauses emergency department admissions after cyberattack

The emergency department at Ascension Saint Agnes Hospital in Southwest Baltimore has stopped receiving new patients, following a cyberattack that affected clinical operations at Ascension health centers nationwide.

The Maryland Institute for Emergency Medical Services Systems has informed local emergency medical services of the hospital’s “Mini Disaster” status, according to a news alert the institute sent Wednesday night. MIEMSS will alert the EMS system when Saint Agnes announces that the situation has been resolved and its hospital can safely resume receiving new emergency patients, the release says.

Justin Blome, a spokesperson for the hospital, said Thursday morning that the emergency department doesn’t have a timeline for when patients will be received again. In the meantime, EMS workers are taking patients they previously would have taken to Saint Agnes to neighboring hospitals instead.

The emergency department remained closed as of 4 p.m. Thursday.

Dr. Ted Delbridge, executive director of MIEMMS, couldn’t say Thursday morning exactly how the hospital’s Mini Disaster status would affect the rest of Maryland’s emergency departments. However, he said MIEMMS is hearing from EMS agencies that typically bring patients to Saint Agnes that they are anxious for the hospital’s emergency department to reopen.

Hospitals typically declare Mini Disaster status when their emergency departments are unable to accept patients due to a fire, power outage, gas leak or other similar problem affecting their facilities, Delbridge said. Although local hospitals occasionally experience disruptions in emergency department services because of technological problems, it’s rare for them to suspend emergency department services for longer than an hour or two, he said.

Officials at Ascension, a nonprofit Catholic health system with about 140 hospitals across the country, detected unusual activity Wednesday on some technology network systems, which they determined was from a “cyber security event,” according to a news release Thursday .

The health system’s care teams have initiated procedures to ensure patient care is as minimally affected as possible and continues to be delivered safely, but there has been a disruption to clinical operations, the news release says.

Mandiant, a cybersecurity firm headquartered in Virginia, is assisting Ascension in investigating and addressing the attack, and the health system has notified the appropriate authorities, the release says.

“Together, we are working to fully investigate what information, if any, may have been affected by the situation,” the release says. “Should we determine that any sensitive information was affected, we will notify and support those individuals in accordance with all relevant regulatory and legal guidelines.”