Candidate for Kingston mayor Scott Denny alleged Tuesday morning at the chamber of commerce’s mayoral candidates meet-and-greet that the WMCHealth hospital on Mary’s Avenue in Kingston had been turning away patients experiencing emergencies since Sunday morning at 11 a.m.
Emergency Services for Ulster County confirmed that diversion was in effect since the weekend, and was ended a little after 11:30 a.m. on Tuesday, October 17.
“They’re diverting the people and the ambulances to go to other hospitals,” Denny had reported. “As of this morning, they were notified again, today, they’re still at full diversion. If somebody, God forbid, has a heart attack in this room right now, guess what? The ambulance comes, they’re being told. ‘You got to go Westchester, you got to try to go to Northern Dutchess, you have to go anywhere but there because they can’t take you in.’”
“They are telling then, if you have somebody in your ambulance … you need to go to another hospital,” said Denny. “They’re not saying it’s an IT [Information Technology] issue.”
On Monday, WAMC Health released an announcement regarding “a potential cybersecurity incident.” The release made no mention of diversions.
Denny noted that he had been at Northern Dutchess Hospital on Monday and was told the facility was having problems treating their own residents because of the overflow from Kingston. “I don’t understand why it hasn’t been put out to the media,” he said. “And it seems to me it should that should have been public knowledge.”
“Health Alliance, regardless of whether they’re in full diversion,” said Denny’s opponent, mayor Steve Noble, “has continued to help serve folks in need. I think that they’re having some sort of IT issue at the campus that has caused them some issues, but they are still meeting the needs of our residents that are in any emergency situation.”
Mayor Noble acknowledged that the hospital had made him aware of the situation on Monday.
“What I do know is that they have alerted everyone that needs to know from the state to the county to local governments,” said Noble. “I do know that they’ve treated everyone with respect and dignity, and have worked to continue normal operations to the best of their ability during this time.”
Confronted on Tuesday morning with the allegation that people had been redirected to other hospitals regional director for marketing and communications for the Westchester Medical Center health network Lynn Nichols would not answer the question. Asked to deny it, she demurred, instead offering a statement which had been released earlier by the hospital.
“Health Alliance of the Hudson Valley, including Health Alliance Hospital, Margaretville Hospital and Mountainside Residential Care Center,” the statement said, “are experiencing a potential cyber-security threat and an IT system outage. Patient care has not been impacted during this time.”
At noon on Tuesday, WMCHealth senior director of network strategic communications Andrew LaGuardia issued a further statement claiming that WMC “had been responding to a potential cybersecurity incident at HealthAlliance Hospital.” He claimed patient care had not been impacted.
“Upon identifying the incident, WMCHealth notified law enforcement, the New York State Department of Health, and Ulster County officials,” the statement said. “WMHCHealth launched an investigation with the assistance of a third-party cybersecurity firm. To protect the data integrity of the rest of the health network and out of an abundance of caution, its local facilities had been temporarily disconnected from shared WMCHealth IT systems.”
Landline telephone, Internet and employee email access at those facilities were currently unavailable. The statement also said WAMC was “committed to being as transparent as possible as we investigate the nature and scope of this incident, and we will continue to work with law enforcement.”
Should the investigation determine that this incident resulted in unauthorized access to and/or acquisition of patient or employee information, WMCHealth said it would provide notifications to individuals in accordance with applicable laws.
LaGuardia’s statement ended with the assurance that all scheduled procedures would proceed as planned. Patients with questions about scheduled procedure should call 845-334-HAHV.
As of noon on Tuesday, October 17, a hospital employee at Northern Dutchess Hospital confirmed that its emergency room was still overwhelmed by the number of patients from Kingston. “Yeah, we are. It’s packed,” she said. “We are packed. It’s completely full.”
She sounded exhausted but then offered, “But you are still welcome to come in.”
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