As of the writing of this week’s Ink Drops, many of the functions and staff within the Waterbury HEALTH system as well as other Prospect Medical Holdings operations including the Eastern Connecticut Health Network (ECHN) with hospitals in Manchester and Vernon, were continuing to work with mostly paper records following a recent ransomware attack.

According to Nick Hut, writing for Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA), Los Angeles-based Prospect Medical Holdings incurred a ransomware attack August 3 temporarily requiring some emergency patients to be diverted and relegating staff to using paper records and other downtime procedures.

As the FBI reportedly continues its work in the investigation, the 11 individual hospitals and subsidiary health systems across California, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, along with 166 clinics in those states and others have had to slow operations to a snail’s pace or temporarily pause services altogether.

The ripple effect that initially forced protocols such as ER diversions, also impacted countless patients by canceling or postponing elective surgery and gastrointestinal procedures, outpatient medical imaging, blood draws, diagnostic radiology, women’s imaging, open MRI, cardiopulmonary rehabilitation, and outpatient physical therapy.

Hopefully, by the time you are reading this, things will be shifting toward some form of normalcy, and steps toward damage control and prevention of future similar incidents will be underway. One would hope that this latest, multi-state debacle will serve as the last straw, and lawmakers and agencies with the power to do so will devote the necessary funds and human resources to addressing cyberattacks that have increasingly been affecting health systems and the price we all pay for the care they render.

These systems have already been identified as low hanging fruit for unscrupulous cyber criminals. One study by the Ponemon Institute found the average cost of an attack on the health care industry is nearly $11 million, higher than any other sector — a figure that has increased by 53 percent since 2020, Hut writes for HFMA.

Another issue involving health care systems — that is also being blamed for the out-of-control health care cost drivers affecting all our health insurance premiums — is the nearly hidden impact of noncompete agreements in healthcare provider contracts. Connecticut’s Healthcare Advocate Ted Doolittle recently reached out detailing this impact.

Under noncompetes, health care professionals are being limited from looking for other opportunities with other providers, even as demand for their services, particularly primary care, is increasing. Doolittle said a group of doctors and others who recently held audience with US Senator Chris Murphy, told him noncompetes are limiting competition, hurting affordability, and impeding access to health care.

These types of discussions are apparently gaining traction as bipartisan Congressional legislation to end all noncompetes, with few exceptions, is under consideration. We are also happy to see Connecticut is taking the lead on this front after state lawmakers voted this year to significantly narrow what’s allowed in medical noncompetes.

It’s scary to think criminals somewhere in the world are so willingly and locally compromising health care delivery with ransomware hijackings such as the one being administered at Waterbury Health and Prospect Medical Holdings. But, it’s good to know that other internal health care delivery threats we may face like noncompete agreements are being taken seriously by lawmakers in Hartford and Washington.