Ascension Health is still dealing with a cyber attack Thursday afternoon.
The system shutdown impacts Ascension systems across the nation by delaying appointments and affecting services for patients.
TMJ4's Mariam Mackar is following up on day two of the data breach and says patients are still being turned away.
Viewers have contacted TMJ4 saying they've missed CT scans, mammograms, and have been unable to pick up prescriptions.
The breach has taken down phone and computer access for health care facilities and medical professionals are forced to take patient notes by hand.
"It looks a lot like a ransomware attack and the impact. In some cases, organizations are able to shut down their systems to stop the bad guys from infiltrating the systems before something bad happens," Alex Holden, a cyber-security expert, told TMJ4 on the first day of the outage. "But sometimes it's already too late."
There's no word yet on whether the cyber-attack has compromised patient personal information, or how long the system will be down.
Mackar asked an impacted patient, who requested to stay anonymous, how the breach has affected their care.
"did you have any idea you would be impacted by this?" asked Mackar.
"No, I really didn't," the woman replied. "All they said was they couldn't reach me by phone because they couldn't use their phone systems—they couldn't access any of my information to call me and tell me what the situation was."
The woman said she drove all the way to her clinic on Thursday before getting turned away from her appointment, which was an important one.
She was scheduled for an ultrasound and secondary mammogram after doctors told her they found something unusual on her annual scan last week.
"I've never had an abnormal reading before so I'm not quite sure what to expect," she told Mackar. "But timing is kind of important and I'd like to be able to know what the follow up plan is."
The Wisconsin Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals shared in a statement this afternoon that the loss of electronic health records has "dramatically slowed down care.... with no end in sight."
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