ECHN hospitals slowly recovering, other facilities closed due to suspected cyberattack

A cyberattack is suspected to have caused a systemwide IT problem that was forcing the Eastern Connecticut Health Network (ECHN) to divert patients from its hospital emergency rooms, according to ECHN.

The issue was affecting the ERs at both Manchester Memorial Hospital and Rockville General Hospital.

As of 5:30 p.m., ECHN said the ERs at both hospitals were open and accepting patients, but ambulance and EMS companies were still diverting patients to other facilities.

Patients with appointments are being contacted individually, they said.

The ECHN website says all Prospect Medical Holdings facilities are experiencing IT complications, which is impacting some ECHN locations.

The network's website listed several facilities that are closed until further notice because of the IT issues. They are:

• All ECHN Medical Group Primary Care locations
• All ECHN Medical Group Specialty locations
• Center for Wound Healing
• Elective surgeries
• Evergreen Imaging Center
• Gastroenterology appointments & procedures
• Outpatient Laboratories (ECHN Diagnostics)
• Podiatry Clinic
• Stroke Center
• Tolland Imaging Center
• Urgent Care Center
• Visiting Nurse & Health Services of CT
• Women's Center for Wellness

Prospect Medical Holdings own and operate 16 hospitals and a network of more than 165 outpatient facilities and clinics in Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Southern CaliforniaWaterbury Health is also part of the affected.

In Connecticut, the network includes ECHN and Waterbury HEALTH.

In a Facebook post, Waterbury Hospital said its computer systems are down with the outage affecting all Waterbury HEALTH inpatient and outpatient operations and they might reschedule some appointments.

Waterbury Hospital is following "downtime procedures," and that includes using paper records until the issue is resolved.

They said patient visitation is not affected.