Computer Virus Forces Hospital To Divert Ambulances 213
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by
Soulskill
from the outbreak-at-the-hospital dept.
from the outbreak-at-the-hospital dept.
McGruber writes "The Atlanta Journal Constitution newspaper is reporting that a hospital with campuses in Lawrenceville and Duluth, Georgia turned ambulances away after the discovery of 'a system-wide computer virus that slowed patient registration and other operations.' They're only currently accepting patients with 'dire emergencies.' A spokeswoman for the hospital said the diversion happened because 'it's a trauma center and needs to be able to respond rapidly.' The situation began on Thursday afternoon and is expected to last through the weekend."
We're in a sad state when... (Score:5, Insightful)
The hospital is still treating patients in emergency situations but is asking people with minor ailments, such as sore throats or sprained ankles, to contact their regular providers, Okun said.
We're in a sad state when people need to go to the hospital to deal with sore throats and sprained ankles.
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And when hospital computers run Microsoft operating systems!
Re:We're in a sad state when... (Score:5, Informative)
The server in question doesn't even show an error message. Well, sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. you can stop and start the services all you like, but you're just wasting time as the JES2 spool gets bigger. The only solution is to reboot the Windows Server. It is redundantly mirrored, but we any of you with any sense will know that this does not make the situation any less frightening. The mirror is bound to be subject to the exact same problem, since it's software-related, which would put you back at square 1 in the event of a fail-over.
Don't even get me started about malware. Of course, all the workstations throughout the system are Windows systems. Those should not matter in case of a power outage or system-wide failure because we have downtime procedures in place, but let's face it, we'd be majorly crippled if we were to ever loose our entire network and it would likely impair our ability to serve customers. Although it shouldn't. So far we've been lucky.
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You can dynamically add volumes to the JES2 spool. No need for an IPL. That's what your system programmer should doing. And automation should be running a command such as $DJOBQ,SPL=(%>3.0) every 5 minutes or so to check for jobs with high spool utilization, triggering an alert to the consoles.
Re:We're in a sad state when... (Score:4, Funny)
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While that may be so, an idiot is an idiot, whether he be a customer or not.
In fact, much of American business is dedicated to exploiting idiots. Half or more? There really are a lot of legitimate businesses, that have products to sell to intelligent people. The rest? Bank of America comes to mind. They do provide some invaluable services that are necessary to the economy. At the same time, they enjoy ripping off the clueless idiots who can't survive without an 18% (or higher) interest credit cart.
Wha
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What other operating system has viruses?
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Oh yeah, I heard about that one mac virus, and that other virus for Linux
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Every single operating system known to man is prone to viruses - some more so than others. More to the point, would be asking about exploits, rather than viruses. All systems have exploits. The only reason Linux and/or Mac is more secure than Windows, is the philosophy behind security. Windows sacrifices security for convenience, Linux sacrifices some convenience for security, and Mac is somewhere between the two.
But, an idiot can compromise any system, in about two heartbeats, if he is given admin powe
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Does Linux sacrifice that much convenience for security?
I have to type in my root password once in a while when using the GUI, and I have to write "sudo" occasionally. It's not really a pain at all.
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The OS they're running isn't mentioned you dumb faggotlord fanboy.
of course it runs windows. it's a hospital. wouldn't it be fun if their sw stopped working when they upgrade to lion or 3.0 kernel ?
Re:We're in a sad state when... (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, but until the health care reform package runs most of the for profit insurance companies out of business that's going to remain to be the case.
Sprained ankles though I wouldn't lump as a minor ailment. You don't necessarily always know if it's a sprain or a minor factor or torn ligament. Delaying care can end up costing a lot more money and result in inferior recovery.
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Yes, but until the health care reform package runs most of the for profit insurance companies out of business
Whatever profits are to be purportedly "lost" during the healthcare reform will be made up by others' mandatory enrollment. It's all feelgood bullshit to keep the same ridiculously bloated healthcare complex fat. There are no real compromises here, and as usual, the common man loses.
It's funny how all the big-business parrots are decrying it as "socialism," the for-profit healthcare complex is a big-businessman's wet dream.
Also, the computer virus was because Windows.
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Actually, the problem with that theory is that the health care reform package limits overhead to 15% for group packages and 20% for individual packages. The question is how that's going to be defined and the DHHS is making them include sales charges as overhead. Ultimately, they might be still around as private insurers, but the profit is going to be absolute crap as they'll have to rebate any money they take in on premiums above that back to the subscribers.
Ultimately everybody enrolls in health insurance
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A long time ago I worked for a medical equipment company, and learned that there are also some systemic biases that greatly increase the costs. Note I did not say 'inflate', because it truly is a complex problem with no magic solution.
So, this company made dialysis machines, which were largely sold to hospitals. These machines included a blood pump, which is basically a piece of clear 1/2" vinyl tubing formed into about 2/3 of a circle, with a triangular 'cam' with little rollers that went around and arou
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It IS fat, it's just not the doctors and hospitals themselves that are fat. The U.S. spends more per-capita on healthcare than any other country in the world, but we aren't even in the top ten for results. That money is going somewhere and that somewhere is fat.
The problem is that people in Washington think insurance is magic. The best insurance can do is charge you the average actual cost of healthcare plus extra for profit and overhead. That's not helpful to someone who can't afford X.
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Sprained ankles though I wouldn't lump as a minor ailment. You don't necessarily always know if it's a sprain or a minor factor or torn ligament. Delaying care can end up costing a lot more money and result in inferior recovery.
Not really. Unless your managed to fracture more than one bone, in which case the pain would likely drive you to seek care, if you elevated it, put some ice on it, took some OTC pain meds you could easily wait out a weekend.
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Re:We're in a sad state when... (Score:4, Insightful)
Just because we're young and durable doesn't mean that there aren't a good number of others who have genuine health concerns that seem trivial to us.
Re:We're in a sad state when... (Score:5, Insightful)
A sore throat can be something trivial, but it can also be something major. Going to a GP to have it checked out rather than waiting and seeing is the height of common sense. A hospital, not so much. Hospitals can do nothing a GP can't do, for those sorts of ailments. Hospitals only make sense if you actually need centralized, high-end medical treatment. You can't fit an MRI into a GP's office and a doctor certainly can't take one with them if they're doing house calls, nor will smaller facilities be able to detect everything in-house.
Oh, I thought you were referring to a society with sensible health-care!
The most intelligent health-care systems are ones where the method of delivery is one that suits the complaint. That doesn't necessarily mean the best - a poor but intelligent system will be more effective than a poor but stupid one, and will also be more reliable and more responsive than a rich but stupid one, but the rich but stupid system will still deliver better results in the end. What you want is rich and intelligent, but no country currently does that.
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I know folks who go to the hospital for that and things even more trivial. Like - I am not making this up - heartburn. For me I have to be just about dying before I go to the ER and wait 4 hours to be told to go home and rest and drink plenty of fluids.
Re:We're in a sad state when... (Score:4, Informative)
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Yup - a few Saturdays ago I made an emergency call to a doctor (on a holiday weekend no less) and after discussion brought a urine sample to a hospital over a suspected urinary tract infection.
Now, for an ordinary person it might not have been the right call, but in this case the person it concerned had been in the hospital intensive care unit three times (a week each) with sepsis that originated in urinary tract infections. It has been kept under control for a few years now with vigilance and a bottle of
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This. And $deity help you if you have a tooth go south on a weekend.
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Like my uncle, who went to the emergency room with chest pain, only to be treated for heartburn and sent home, only to come back to the emergency room several hours later and die of the heart attack he was actually having.
FYI, symptoms of heartburn are similar to symptoms heart attacks.
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Depending on the context, sprained ankles can make sense -- some sprains are difficult for the layperson to differentiate from a break.
Sore throats... Well, not unless someone is immune suppressed or they're in a situation where a walk-in clinic or their regular general practitioner is unavailable.
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We're in a sad state when people need to go to the hospital to deal with sore throats and sprained ankles.
You're not very good at reading between the lines of a Cover-Your-Ass Public Relations statement. Are you?
Having a "sore throat" in a US Hospital ER is a very specific code word which means vomiting blood, writhing on the floor in agony, and basically dying slowly in front of the ER nurses while they still refuse to treat you. Go ahead, listen to the 911 tapes and watch the actual video of the waiting room. [youtube.com]
I'm sure that they would have said a similar thing "don't come to the hospital if you just have a sore
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It's all abount billing (Score:2)
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The oft-parroted "greatest healthcare system in the world" meme is often trotted out in the same sentence with "...accessible to everyone...", because yes, it's true, if you have not the means to access the greatest healthcare system in the world via more appropriate avenues, the local E.R. must treat you. And that is perhaps the biggest problem with this system. We (those of us who pay taxes AND insurance premiums) pay to have the sore throats and sprained
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Welcome to health care in "the most advanced country on earth".
Re:We're in a sad state when... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:We're in a sad state when... (Score:5, Insightful)
What if you're poor? You have two choices:
1) Urgent care, which takes cash-only payments (and usually requires them up-front), or
2) Emergency rooms, which are free; you just have to say "I don't have insurance and I don't have any money". Or even better, you can say "No habla Ingles". The hospital is required to treat you, and then pass the bill on to all the other patients by charging them $10 for a tylenol pill and $20 for a band-aid.
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I think it's pretty safe to assume that anyone that gets a tylenol in a hospital, and actually pays for it (or their insurance pays for it), is probably there for some much more urgent reason than a simple headache.
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Why don't they just refuse to admit them, and send them to the nearest urgent care clinic?
I can't say this is completely universal over here in the US, but for most people who have insurance, you usually have to pay something called a "co-pay" any time you visit a doctor or medical facility. This charge varies by insurance provider and by what kind of facility you're going to. So, for instance, with my insurance, if I go to a doctor's office for any kind of visit (checkup with primary care physician or vi
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I go to my doctor. If it is not during standard visiting hours, I go to the doctor on duty. If my doctor is not in, I go to a different one.
I once went there with a sprained ankle and he told me to go to the hospital immediately. The time I would have won if I would have gone directly to the hospital is about 30 minutes.
All of them take my insurance. I am not even sure the hospital takes cash.
Hospitals will let me wait for much longer to deal with people who actually need hospital care. They will not send y
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Then I'd go to an urgent care clinic, which takes both my insurance and cash-only payments from people who don't have insurance.
Typical out-of-touch-fuckwit response. How many of those who don't have health insurance can afford even the lower rates that urgent care clinics charge? Hmmm?
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If you have neither insurance nor cash, you have to go to the emergency room where they have to provide you with at least a minimum of care. You'll be hounded for the money you don't have later, but at least you get healthy enough to go stand in the unemployment line.
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A copay implies that there is insurance. Try showing up without insurance or cash and see how you do.
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There's a reason for this stuff: long waits are necessary because there's dozens of people there bringing their kids in for runny noses and sore throats. Charging $500 for a bandaid is necessary because all those dozens of people there for common colds aren't going to pay, so they have to pass the costs for all the non-payers on to people who do pay.
Fix the healthcare system in this county and you wouldn't see this crap.
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Go to a seven day a week walk in clinic?
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if you'd ever had a sprained ankle you'd know it's not easily extinguishable from a break in the bone. so x-rays and thus a hospital visit.
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This is just one of the many diagnostic tricks taught during almost every level of first aid.
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If you'd ever had a broken ankle you'd know there was no confusing it for a sprain.
I've had both (hairline fractures, not full-on busted ankle), and they're very similar.
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If you'd ever had a broken ankle you'd know there was no confusing it for a sprain.
Maybe, but for the other 99% of us, if we have some sort of accident that results in serious pain in an ankle, how do we determine which we have?
The obvious way is to go to a hospital and ask them. But if you know a better (i.e., more reliable) way, how about telling us inexperienced folks how to tell the two apart.
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In case I'm still not being clear, thi
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There's basically no way in which non-medical personal can use any of those rules besides 'An inability to bear weight both immediately and in the emergency department for four steps.'.
If you cannot do that, you need an x-ray. (I am assuming by 'in the emergency department' they mean 'ten to twenty minutes later', not that there is some magical property of emergency departments.) If you can take four steps, you still might need one. So people can rule themselves into needing an x-ray, but can't possibly ru
Re:We're in a sad state when... (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, but in Australia you've salt water crocodiles to solve your problems with politicians.
which o/s (Score:2)
as if I have to ask...
the article mentioned nothing about which o/s or apps they run. or their network topology. things that matter, you know.
bet they thought about mentioning windows but their legal team said 'meh, why create trouble?'.
omissions like that are dishonest.
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LoB
Re:which o/s (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps, but IE is a major security hole. At the very least, hospitals should be absolutely required to use a secure browser. Secondly, with ERP, etc, being browser based, there's no difference from an operator standpoint between Windows and OpenBSD. You still click links, you still open tabs, you still get to set the wallpaper on the background. Ergo, there's no rational reason to use something that's expensive and insecure over something that's cheap and secure. If there are no platform-specific apps (they're all web-based) then go with the OS that is least likely to endanger service.
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Perhaps, but IE is a major security hole.
IE8 and IE9 are fairly secure, especially if paired with Vista or Windows 7, which support protected mode. Now, if they're still using IE6 on XP, then they're screwed.
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Wait.. you're accusing him of trolling just because he said IE is a major security hole, Which is pretty much a well known fact?
So you work for Microsoft corporate or something?
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dammit appologies... stupid slashdot thresholds...
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NP. The problem with snarky comebacks is that Slashdot doesn't have a way of unthresholding the thing a person is snarkily replying to. I'm mentally taking it that you're really replying to the AC I snarked at. :)
linux (Score:2)
at my hospital we use webapps for 99% of access to results/radiography etc... with office365, isn't linux becoming the obvious answer? (ok, no outlook replacement maybe... - but all anyone uses it for is email!)
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Nuisance, Not Crisis (Score:5, Informative)
Bad IT isn't uncommon in hospitals (Score:5, Insightful)
Hospitals are often quite badly prepared for this sort of thing. A big problem is the number of computerised "medical devices" where the vendor insists on a very specific update policy (or very specific restrictions on 3rd party software).
I worked at one hospital where Confiker took the whole IT system down. A big problem in repairing the damage was that there were a lot of PACS (digital X-ray/CT/MRI viewing/storage) workstations where the PACS vendor would not permit the relevant windows updates or a 3rd party anti-virus to be installed on the servers/workstations. They relented after a 24 hour stand-off, after they realised that they was nothing they could do to keep the system happy enough to meet the SLA without the updates and a suitable anti-malware.
I work at another hospital now, where similar lack of updates due to comparability with old business apps prevents updates. E.g. The PCs still run XP SP1 (even the brand-new quad core xeons). There also doesn't appear to be funding for updating anti-malware - the hospital use Sophos 7 (which became unsupported last year).
This hospital has chronic problems with virus/malware infestation on a number of office machines - but while IT can clean the computers manually, there seems to be a reservoir if infection on file-servers, USB drives, etc. So the infections come straight back after a manual deletion. This hasn't caused a catastrophe locally, so management don't seem to care, but it is a major annoyance, as infected documents frequently end-up getting e-mailed out to other hospitals/doctors and destroyed without trace by the recipient's e-mail system. Docs have been known to put the files on a USB stick, take it home, clean it with an up-to-date virus scanner and then e-mail it out.
why can't 3rd partys be forced by hipaa (Score:3)
to let IT install updates / anti-virus?
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"This hospital has chronic problems with virus/malware infestation on a number of office machines - but while IT can clean the computers manually, there seems to be a reservoir if infection on file-servers, USB drives, etc. So the infections come straight back after a manual deletion. This hasn't caused a catastrophe locally, so management don't seem to care, but it is a major annoyance, as infected documents frequently end-up getting e-mailed out to other hospitals/doctors and destroyed without trace by th
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That was my first thought. No plan. As a technologist I'm peeved by the fact that people assume a system will always function properly because it always has in the past. Therefore it is terribly difficult to get a business to plan for outages.
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Yes, for very good reason network medical device vendors are specific as to what client software modifications can be made. This includes client-side security measures such as service packs, security patches, and antivirus. This is primarily due to FDA regulations which require full software qualification, validation, testing, and documentation. The full scope and diligent execution of an FDA-compliant quality safety process takes time and costs money. This is not like IT operations patching a web server; a
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At a hospital you also often have lots of really flakey embedded devices and custom applications which don't react well to being probed... Once a worm starts spreading around the network and scanning, these devices can also crash under the load despite not being directly infected.
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That is allowed?No one should email or bring flash drives to work.
Part of the problem is that you can't tell doctors what to do. Thanks to the AMA cartel, there are always fewer doctors than we need, so the result is that they hold the whip hand in employment relationships. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it gets annoying when they have that kind of privilege and no one else does.
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People will indeed browser facebook from the MRI...
If you have a browser on the machine which can access the internet then sooner or later it will be used.
People also browse the internet from "servers" for the same reason.
The solution is for machines which don't need browsers to not have any installed, and for those which only need to access internal web based applications to be restricted to only accessing those.
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the very first internet hack of a medical system (back in the late 1980s or mid 1990s IIRC) was, in fact, an MRI or CAT scanner in San Diego. This predated virus problems - it was just a computer that was on the internet, and someone was able to figure out the default user/pass. I suspect it was a CAT scanner, because according to what I read back then, the penetrator could have adjusted the parameters in such a way as to cause lethal injury. I can't imagine how an MRI could do that. In this case, the p
Hospitals have terrible obsolete platforms (Score:5, Interesting)
I did a contract with one last March which was upgrading to new state of the art medical billing system to be Obamacare compliant.
Ran Windows 7? No. Windows XP Service pack 3 right? No. Windows XP SP 2 with IE 6?!
Normally it is not an issue but with HIPPA it is very serious this irritated me. Someone can literally hold the hospital hostage if these medical records for tens of millions of dollars and they need at least a patched and still supported version of XP like corporate America does. The problem is custom medical software and custom devices for Xrays and MRIs use IE 6 still and are not certifed with XP SP 3 ... unless you give them $$$$ to buy all new epuipment over again. This is new software being developed in 2010 I may add requiring IE 6 and some software wont even run with SP 3 on XP. This means no security patches.
It does not surprise me there are viruses on hospital computers as they can't be patched. WIth HIPPA you would think a hospital would always demand and use state of the art fully patched systems for security. But if were the medical records software company or make MRI machines I would be still requiring IE 6 too so I can then price gouch and double dip and charge3 another $400,000 in 2013 when support ends. I can make even MORE money. ... end rant
The greed is incredible in the industry, but doctors can be the most and worst clients and users if you chat with anyone who supports them. THey feel supperior because they have those PHDs and make tons of money. Luckily I just helped install stuff and ignored the rest of the staff. As a result I.T. staff just never upgrade as they do not want to deal with these users at all
not just Hospitals are stuck with XP / IE6 (Score:2)
lot's of other places still have XP and they are big places like BP.
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I happen to be typing this from a rebuild machine I'm working on at the moment, building from XP Pro x86 SP1a (long story, not my choice. License issues. Naturally not for me, since I run Linux and BSD exclusively). Microsoft is rate-limiting the download speed of the XP SP3 to near dialup speeds. Maybe this is to encourage folks to migrate to W7. It downloaded much quicker through Citrix from a share in our CoLo three states away, through the same pipe at the same time, so I got our copy rather than t
so why can't hippa let IT brake the certifed / DRM (Score:2)
so the software can run in a VM / under a newer OS.
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not an infrequent occurrence (Score:2)
What gave it away? The patients had mice attached to them?
The Onion? (Score:3)
Am I the only one who parsed this headline and thought it was something from The Onion?
Net we'll see "CERT Advisory Issued for Swine Flu Virus"...
This is (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This is (Score:4, Insightful)
While I might agree that some people do become stupid with tech (and oversimplify the complexity that computers are covering up and compensating), we also can't oversimplify the fact that it's not trivial to go back 20+ years to pre-computer procedures overnight for a temporary problem that will go away in a few days (or minutes or hours, as in the case of the tire shop employee).
Besides employees not getting paid enough to go the extra mile (or that they're supposed to be doing something else), the likely end reason is likely that it isn't affordable or efficient or even possible. As it is, a common complain in the healthcare industry is that they're understaffed, and with automation, the number of employees has been reduced so much they would never be able to deal with the backlog manually (assuming that enough employees had the training to deal with pre-computer issues). Not to mention that in a complex team workflow, exceptions would make it risky (ie, if the patient isn't registered in the system, his/hers tests can't be attached, so the doctors can't access them properly, opening the hospital to liabilities).
Old systems likely broke down and got replaced by digital systems that require much less from their operators. Before they might have been able to print, but maybe that printer isn't there anymore. Going all the way back to pre-computers might mean leaches.
As for your tire experience. Maybe the employee was lazy and wasn't willing to go the extra mile. Or maybe he didn't have a yellow pages or a company directory (which might have been on-line). Or, likely, he is supposed to tend the counter, and isn't allowed to do something else when he is supposed to be servicing people coming in the door (or answering the phone). In the "olden days", we might have been dealing with the store owner, which would be more inclined to GEM, but with franchises and staffs cut to a minimum for the sake of 80%+ normalcy, it's no surprise that the quality of service suffers.
In spirit, I agree that computers have made it too easy for stupidity to thrive. In fact, they have made it so easy that it is endemic at the business level, not just at the employee level. Rather than doing the work, businesses just farm it out to someone else, and then to someone else (ie, the "Cloud philosophy"), and you end up dealing with shells that are so far removed from the data that have no knowledge or interest in providing a reasonable service that falls slightly outside the normal expectation. And even when it's a typical offering, quality is often substandard and it only fulfills the need in the most general sense. But I'm starting to digress to another topic, so I'll stop.
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As someone who works in a hospital i can tell you that reverting to a paper and pencil system requires at least 10x the number of workers for the same number of patients. And they would make many life threatening record keeping mistakes mistakes that are time consuming to identify since they would have to use this system infrequently if ever.
As an example transcribing dozens of lab values on possibly hundreds of patients and a worker transposes a potassium of 7.3 to 3.7. That patient could die from that sim
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ASAP! (Score:3)
a trauma center and needs to be able to respond rapidly
And we all know verifying insurance without a computer slows down medical procedures.
Medical Device Patching Conundrum (Score:2)
Re:Wait a second (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wait a second (Score:4, Interesting)
If the computer system shuts down and workflow speeds up then you know you have a problem.
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From talking to some patients it appears thet the worstaions are operating, but they have functioning network connectivty.
That's awful. I hope the network goes down soon.
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Always things like lung, brain, prostate, liver, colon, rectum and other important parts. Why not cancer of the pinky ??
Because your pinky is essentially just bone, muscle, and skin, with a little fat. So when people get cancers originating in their pinkies, they get lumped up with the rest of cancers of the bones, muscles, skin, and (more rarely) adipose tissue.
The Real Story... (Score:5, Insightful)
...is that they have created a system where in they can't function as a hospital without computers.
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they can't function as a hospital without computers.
Change "computers" to "Windows" and you'll be getting to the heart of the problem.
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I don't have any points left, or you'd be +5 right now.
I always amazes me when business comes to a screeching halt, when the power goes out. Or the computer crashes. Or, whatever. FFS, people, life goes on, with or without computers! The grocer can sell milk and eggs without a computer, traffic lights can work without a computer, manufacturing can go on without computers, and doctors can operate without a computer!
I just LOVE computers - but I can perform any job given me, without a damned computer to h
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Seriously though, a lot of manual work has been replaced by computers. So there are actually a lot fewer people doing those jobs. When the computers stop working, those few p
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They haven't come to a screeching halt. They are still handling the most critical emergencies. They are at reduced capacity. Why should it surprise you that they are able to do more with the computers than without? Isn't that the whole reason they have them? If you took a carpenter's hammers away, wouldn't you expect him to lose productivity?
Are you claiming you can get just as much done w/ pencil and paper as with a spreadsheet and take no longer to do it? That you replaced a pencil and papoer costing und
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Businesses DO come to a screeching halt, when the computer quits. I've seen it at banks, grocery stores, gas stations - you name it. The lights flicker, the computers all go offline, and business stops.
In this case, the hospital is indeed handling emergency cases - but the hospital remains crippled. If/when a hospital gets a virus on their network, that should not impact their ability to care for people, simple as that. Life and death should come before considerations of speed, convenience, profitabilit
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There are two main reasons this has become true: electronic medical records and efficiency. The former is being mandated by the government. The latter is due to the lack of enough people to fill slots in the healthcare industry due to the personnel crunch, requiring hospitals to do more with less.
I do technology consulting for hospitals. One thing that's always pissed me off is the nursing shortage. Hospitals go out of their way to woo doctors to their facilities, but nursing pay remains pathetic by com
RTFA (Score:3)
They can function, and still treat patients in emergency situations. But the virus slowed down administration, as it now has to be done by hand.