Illinois Hospital First To Shut Down Completely After Ransomware Attack

You may have noticed that for-profit healthcare in the U.S. is already a hot mess, especially in the most already marginalized parts of the country. Giant, mismanaged health care conglomerates have long pushed their underfunded staffers to the brink, while routinely under-investing in necessary technical upgrades and improvements. It's getting consistently worse everywhere, but in particular in rural or poor regions of the U.S.

And that was before COVID. Not too surprisingly, it doesn't take much for this kind of fragile ecosystem to topple completely. Like St. Margaret's Health in Spring Valley, Illinois, which this week was forced to shut down completely because it simply couldn't recover from a 2021 ransomware attack:

Aransomware attackhit SMP Health in 2021. The attack halted the hospital's ability to submit claims to insurers, Medicare or Medicaid for months, sending it into a financial spiral, Burt said.

Such attacks can have a chain reaction on already broken hospitals and health care systems. Health care workers are sometimes forced to resort to pen and paper for patient charts and prescriptions, increasing the risk of potentially fatal error. Delays in care can also prove fatal. And ransomware is only one of the problems that plague dated medical IT systems whose repair is being made increasingly costly and difficult by medical health care system manufacturers keen on monopolizing repair.

When hospitals like St. Margarets' shut down, they create massive health care vacuums among the already underserved. In this case, with St. Margarets being closed, locals have to travel at least a half an hour for emergency room services and obstetrics services. Which, for many, will be fatal:

Kelly Klotz, 52, a Spring Valley resident with multiple medical issues, said she was concerned the drive could lead to medical complications for her and her parents.

I need access to good medical care at any given time," she said. It's not like I can say I'll schedule my stroke six months from now. It's devastating to this area."

If you're having a heart attack or a stroke, may the odds ever be in your favor, because you're not going to make it there in time," Klotz said.

Data from the University of Carolina indicates that 99 rural U.S. hospitals have shuttered since 2005. Many hospitals are hit with dozens of such attacks on dated IT infrastructure every day. St. Margarets' is being deemed the first to be shut down over a ransomware attack (probably not true), but it's certainly not going to be the last.