Cyber Incident at New Mexico's Only Level 1 Trauma Center Diverts Ambulances and Closes Clinics

A cybersecurity incident at the University of New Mexico Health System forced ambulances to be diverted to other hospitals on Monday and left New Mexico without an emergency department able to treat the most serious injuries for part of the day. The system told patients not to come to its main hospital in Albuquerque and canceled appointments at more than 30 clinics. UNM Health operates the state's only Level 1 trauma center, the highest level of emergency care, at its Albuquerque hospital.

The university's Health Sciences Center, the state's largest academic medical center, canceled classes on Monday and closed for the day. The health system said later in the day that its hospitals and clinics had begun resuming operations in phases. The network handles about 900,000 outpatient visits and about 100,000 emergency room visits a year, according to its website.

Ambulances sent to other hospitals

Presbyterian Healthcare Services and Lovelace Health System, two other large providers in New Mexico, said they were coordinating with UNM Health and taking additional patients. On Monday afternoon, at the main entrance to the Albuquerque hospital, employees in turquoise staff shirts sat on chairs that blocked the waiting room and told patients their appointments might be canceled. At a medical center in Rio Rancho, a suburb of Albuquerque, two security guards at the entrance told patients arriving for appointments to reschedule.

The system limited its acceptance of new patients from 12:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. on Monday while it responded to the disruption, and university leaders activated an emergency operations center to coordinate the response. The university said its information technology security teams moved to contain the incident, notified state and federal law enforcement, and brought in outside partners to help with the investigation.

Messages claimed data was stolen

Multiple employees said they heard messages played across their computers late Monday morning that claimed student, employee and patient information had been stolen. A spokesperson for the health system would not comment on those reports, saying the incident remains an active law enforcement investigation. FBI spokesperson Margot Cravens in Albuquerque said the agency was "assisting our partner" but declined to comment further. Officials have not confirmed that any data was taken, and the nature and extent of the incident were not immediately clear.

Josephine Wolff, a professor of cybersecurity policy at Tufts University, told The Associated Press that breaching a system to play a message on computers is pretty unusual, and that Monday's incident shows "how much work we still have to do to get better at defending ourselves."

Hospitals open Tuesday, classes stay canceled

In an update late Monday, UNM communications director Chris Ramirez said information technology security teams were still working to resolve the cybersecurity event. He said all UNM Health hospitals, UNM Hospital and Sandoval Regional Medical Center, are open, and that all clinics would resume regularly scheduled appointments and procedures on Tuesday, October 27.

Classes at the School of Medicine, the College of Nursing, the College of Pharmacy and the College of Population Health are canceled on Tuesday, while classes at the university's central and branch campuses are not affected. Nonessential employees at the Health Sciences Center were asked to remain home on Tuesday, while essential and clinical employees, and students with clinical responsibilities, were told to report to their usual locations. The system said patients would be contacted to reschedule appointments and procedures missed on Monday.