February 3, 2023: Valley View Health Center, like almost all health care providers in the US, utilizes a variety of electronic systems to manage patient care. All of those systems are subject to cyber attacks, where bad actors attempt to infiltrate or steal data. We work with all of our vendors to constantly update our defenses and protect our patient data from those attacks. Recently one of our important health information partners, NextGen, reported an attempted ransomware attack on their systems. They immediately identified the breach and stopped it before the bad actors could access any patient or client data kept on their systems. NextGen is working with a variety of experts in law enforcement and data security to track down the perpetrators of this attack and to evaluate how the attack occurred in the first place.
Unfortunately attacks like this are an everyday occurrence for all data operations. Just as our patients and clients are reminded to use appropriate cyber protection software on their phones and home computers, VVHC persistently works with our staff and vendors to persistently update our privacy and security practices. For more information on the NextGen ransomware attack, see: https://therecord.media/electronic-health-record-giant-nextgen-dealing-with-cyberattack/
Like all cyber security events, investigations sometimes turn up more information about the attack. We will continue to follow NextGen’s lead and their investigation and will update this report as further information becomes available. But at this stage we have no reason to believe that any VVHC data was compromised by this latest attack.
