Five Steward Health Care Systems' hospitals in Florida lost computer and phone service for an undisclosed period in April because of a cyberattack at Dallas-based Tenet Health System, Miami Herald reported May 6.
A Steward spokesperson told the Miami Herald that a group of its hospitals including Pinewood, Fla.-based North Shore Medical Center, Hialeah, Fla.-based Palmetto General Hospital, Coral Gables (Fla.) Hospital, Hialeah (Fla.) Hospital and Lauderdale Lakes-based Florida Medical Center were affected by the outage at Tenet Health.
Dallas-based Steward Health Care Systems, which acquired the five Florida hospitals from Tenet Health in August, kept Tenet as its IT provider.
On April 26, Tenet Health said in a press release that a cybersecurity incident, that has been ongoing since April 20, had affected a "subset of acute care operations."
The Steward Health spokesperson said the cyberattack affected information technology systems at Miami hospitals causing a disruption in service.
Steward Health is working with Tenet to remediate any delays from the attack.
The cause of the cyber incident is unknown and the company's investigation is ongoing.
St. Mary's Medical Center and Good Samaritan Medical Center, both in West Palm Beach, Fla. also reported that the Tenet cybersecurity incident had suspended user access to certain information technology applications, causing medical staff to rely on paper records and limiting their ability to communicate by telephone.