This week, hospitals and health systems in the southeastern United States received some relief as critical network systems were restored following a ransomware attack on OneBlood, a major blood supplier. The attack, which occurred on August 1, had led to a significant disruption in blood supply management.
However, OneBlood’s network is now partially operational, and the organization is actively encouraging blood donations due to the approaching Tropical Storm Debby. The restoration of their software systems has allowed them to resume near-normal processing and distribution of blood products to over 250 hospitals in the region.
In related news, the U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) received a breach notification from Change Healthcare, a health payments clearinghouse. The report indicated that a ransomware attack had impacted at least 500 individuals, although the breach potentially affected millions of patients nationwide.
Change Healthcare, which faced a major outage in claims payments, began notifying affected patients about the breach in late July. The scale of the breach is still under investigation, with ongoing data analysis to determine the full extent of the impact.
OneBlood, having been targeted by ransomware attacks multiple times recently, was urged by the American Hospital Association to prepare contingency plans for blood supplies.
The incident highlighted the critical nature of blood supply management and the need for hospitals to have robust plans in place to deal with such disruptions. The company’s update emphasized that the importance of maintaining a steady blood supply cannot be underestimated, particularly in emergency situations.
In a separate legal development, former army medic Trent James Russell was convicted of accessing and disclosing U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s protected health information in 2019.
Russell, who worked as an organ donor transplant coordinator, was found guilty of posting a screenshot of Ginsburg’s cancer treatment details on the website 4chan. The information was used in a conspiracy theory about Justice’s death, which circulated widely online. Russell denied the charges but faces up to 20 years in prison, with sentencing scheduled for November 7.
The breach of Justice Ginsburg’s health information and the subsequent conviction of Russell underscores the serious legal consequences of unauthorized access to sensitive medical data. It also highlights the ongoing challenges related to data privacy and security in the healthcare sector, emphasizing the need for stringent safeguards to protect patient information from malicious actions.
