Palomar Health Medical Group continues working to restore its communications systems weeks after reporting a problem to patients, families and staff.
The outage has affected phones, faxes and the patient portal, which are all down, since early this month.
Palomar Health Medical Group sent a statement to NBC 7 addressing the issue:
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On May 5, 2024, Palomar Health Medical Group (“PHMG”) identified suspicious activity on certain computer systems within its network. PHMG quickly took the affected systems offline, to prevent the spread of any potential malware and launched an investigation into the nature and scope of the event. Third-party specialists are working with PHMG to investigate the source of this disruption, to confirm its impact on our systems, and to restore full functionality to our systems as soon as possible. We are also investigating what impact, if any, this incident had on the security of data within our environment. As a result, our phones, faxes, and portal are non-functional at present. We apologize for any inconvenience this incident may be causing and we are working diligently to resolve this issue.
PHMG remains committed to the care of our patients, we are able to accommodate patients, but they may experience delays.
Please note that Palomar Health Healthcare District, including Palomar Medical Center Poway and Palomar Medical Center Escondido, systems and operations have not been impacted by this event.
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Palomar's patients are suffering along with the electronic systems," Vernon Weaver told NBC 7. "The impact is that my wife cannot get a procedure done that she needs to have done. Her doctor ordered this procedure on the 26th of April, and we still have not been able to get it done because they can’t get documentation between the doctor’s office, which is out in an offsite clinic, to the hospital so they can schedule the procedure."
Meanwhile, PHMG said it is investigating what impact, if any, the incident has had on the security of patient data. Meanwhile, many patients are concerned.
“I’m concerned about everything, because all of my medical records are in there," Weaver said. All of my financial data is in there and my next of kin data is in there,” Weaver said.
While Palomar Health Medical Group is impacted, the systems and operations at the Palomar Health District (which includes the Palomar Medical Center Poway and the Palomar Medical Center Escondido) has not been impacted by this event, according to PHMG.
