North Platte, Neb.-based Great Plains Health is nearly recovered following a ransomware attack in November 2019 that encrypted the hospital's computers, according to local NBC affiliate KNOP.
Hospital officials say they are 80 percent finished with the recovery processes. Only thing left to recover is archived information, which hospital officials say is rarely used.
"All of the important patient systems are in the first 40 percent of the systems that have to be recovered. So I can say confidently the systems that we are recovering now have little or no effect on any kind of patient care," said Great Plains Health CIO Brandon Kelliher to KNOP.
When the ransomware attack hit the hospital, staff members were working up to 36 hours straight to recover information as quickly as possible. Within two weeks of the attack, Great Plains Health was able to restore all critical patient systems. The hospital did not have to turn away any patients during the recovery processes.
"During the first couple days of the disaster we had nurses that volunteered to stay all night and help enter data in order to get the systems fully operational as quickly as possible," Mr. Kelliher told KNOP. "They didn't have to do that. They just did it out of the goodness of their heart because they understood the importance of this facility as well as the community they live in."