Scammers are trying to take advantage of a system-wide outage at a Central Illinois hospital system.
The State Journal Register and WAND-TV report that the HSHS Medical Group is reporting that patients are receiving emails, texts, and phone calls claiming to be HSHS representatives seeking payments for services. The medical group’s online and electronic medical records systems have been offline since Sunday, August 27th. Billing is one of the many systems that has been affected by the system-wide outage .
HSHS said that no payments are being collected at this time.
No information about the breach of patient data has been revealed by the system so far on their dedicated update page. WAND says they have been referred to the update website when asking about the possibility of a patient information breach.
HSHS System president and chief executive officer Damond W. Boatwright on Friday acknowledged that a system-wide outage was due to a “cybersecurity incident” in a video posted to the dedicated updates page. Boatwright said that the system is working with third-party experts and law enforcement to determine the breadth and scope of the attack.