HSE Cyber Security Incident Update

• Health care services continue to be severely impacted by the cyber attack.
• Our IT teams continue to work around the clock seven days a week to restore services, but this restoration work has to be done in a very safe way.
• Health services are planning to operate essential services within contingency arrangements for the next number of weeks.
• Our EDs are open for all emergencies but are very busy. Only attend if you need urgent care. Please consider all other care options including Injury Units, GP out of Hours services and your local pharmacy.
• Steady progress is being made across the acute services however significant delays remain across many areas.
• Restoration of community services is progressing well as we continue to work to get our systems back up and running.

Health services update

• While good progress has been made in restoring some of our systems, services around the country are continuing to see significant impacts and disruptions to services. Although essential services are continuing, our systems are not functioning as usual and patients may experience delays and in some cases cancellations. People can check updates on services that are affected on the HSE website service updates page.
• Our main focus has been to get our priority systems back online, including radiology and diagnostic systems, maternity and infant care, patient administration systems, chemotherapy and radiation oncology, most hospitals are still dealing with substantial challenges and limited functionality. As a result, patients may find their experiences far slower and less integrated compared to normal.
• Many of our emergency departments are very busy at the moment. As always the patients requiring the most urgent care will be seen first. People who present to emergency departments may experience much longer waiting times for non-urgent care and should consider all available alternatives before presenting to the Emergency Department.
• Ongoing: Health services are being asked to plan for operating essential services within contingency arrangements for the next number of weeks. 
• The HSE’s Chief Clinical Officer has provided guidance to all clinicians on patient safety and priority focus while our services respond to this attack 
• Services nationwide and the HSE centrally are assessing risk on an ongoing basis and putting in place new arrangements to maintain care and patient safety in hospital and community services.
• Hospitals and community services nationwide are seeing varied impacts, but all teams are responding with contingency arrangements, including redeploying staff, rescheduling some procedures and appointments, and adjusting processes as needed.
• Vaccinations and COVID-19 test and trace are operating, without the GP referral system for testing, and people with symptoms may attend test centres without an appointment. Full details of walk-in testing centres available at hse.ie 
• The National Ambulance Service is operating normally and all systems and services are working as usual.
• Medical card services have been significantly disrupted and our processes are slower as a result. As it's not possible to register medical card applications online at the moment, we are asking people to send in postal applications. While we are processing emergency cards as quickly as possible, applications for non- emergency cards have been impacted. LoCall 0818 22 44 78 (9am - 5pm Monday to Friday) if you have any medical card queries. For more information go to here
• The HSE has a high court order to stop personal and medical information that may have been stolen in this cyber-attack from being published online.
• Specialists and our legal team are monitoring websites used by criminals to check for activity involving any data stolen in the cyber-attack.
• People receiving any suspicious calls, texts or other contacts seeking personal or banking details are advised to report these contacts to their local Garda station.
• We are conscious that staff is fatigued as they continue to deal with the pandemic, along with IT issues and workarounds.
• Work has commenced on the entry of data with measures being put in place to assist with this input.

Information systems response:

• The decryption tool continues to be deployed on individual systems based on clinical priority. 
• Over 80% of all servers and devices have been restored.
• Acute services are almost fully restored, along with community and corporate with the remaining pieces to be finalised.
• Many of our priority systems are back online on local sites including radiology and diagnostic systems, maternity and infant care, patient administration systems, chemotherapy, radiation oncology, radiotherapy and laboratories. But our work in these areas remains challenged and far slower and less integrated compared to normal. Restoration is technically challenging and needs to be done in a safe way.
• Our priority remains on bringing back key patient care systems in line with clinical priority.
• Restoration of HSE staff email is taking place on a phased, controlled basis. This is a key service priority. There still remain small, residual problems in some areas.
• We are still seeing unusually high level of ED presentations for this time of year. Again we remind people they should consider all available alternatives before presenting to the Emergency Departments.
• HSE internet is now stable.
• Acutes - Work is ongoing to restore the Evolution system in Lourdes and Cavan;  5 stroke systems being restored currently; CSSD - St Luke’s & Maternity in Sligo remaining
• Corporate - all main systems are up and working, work ongoing on corporate reporting systems
• Community - 3 systems to be restored in ophthalmology CHO5 and 1 Social Inclusion system
• The Healthlink system is now fully functional

For more information:

HSE website service updates

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