Patients still feeling impacts after Kettering Health cyberattack; ways to protect your information

KETTERING — Patients are still feeling the impact after a cyber attack caused system-wide issues at Kettering Health on Tuesday.

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As reported on News Center 7 at 6, procedures are being evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

Care teams are calling patients and working to reschedule procedures. According to Kettering Health, patients with appointments should assume their appointments are happening. Patients will be contacted if their appointments need to be rescheduled.

News Center 7 attempted to call two Kettering Health locations but were unable to get through to anyone.

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The Greater Dayton Area Hospital Association said Kettering Health is continuing to see patients, but there are limitations in the procedures they can perform.

They said those details are being communicated to local emergency responders.

Other area hospitals are seeing an increase in their number of patients because of the closure.

GDAHA said the increases are manageable, but patients may see higher wait times.

News Center 7 asked Kettering Health questions, including how employees are getting paid during the outage, a timeline for when elective surgeries will resume, and if people’s information has been compromised.

At the time of reporting, we have not received a response.

Consumer Advisor Clark Howard said patients should already be taking steps toward damage control.

“If you’re thinking, oh no, I was there. I gave them my Social Security number. Or you’re not sure in any case, you need to run, not walk today to freeze your credit,” Howard said.

He emphasized that freezing your credit is not permanent.

“You have to go through an extra validation process where you temporarily thaw your file so that an application for credit can go through,” Howard said.

We will continue to follow this story.

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