ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — It’s been five days since Lovelace Health System has been operating on a smaller scale.

Lovelace’s parent company, Ardent Health Services, found out it had been attacked with ransomware on Thanksgiving. As of Tuesday, Ardent doesn’t know the extent of the attack.

Services are slowly opening back up like “acute needs” and urgent care. However, some services aren’t available – like filling a prescription.

“I’ve been trying to get a prescription renewed and I haven’t been able to do it,” said David Sanchez, a patient at Lovelace. “Normally I go through their MyChart app, which is just an online app. So I called them directly and I was told that that system is down.”

Once he was told about the hack, Sanchez asked if he could speak to a doctor.

“They said that the Lovelace on Jefferson was essentially, except for urgent care, was essentially closed, because they could not access any of their patient’s records,” Sanchez said. “Since they could not access any of the patient’s records, they would be unable to refill my prescription.”

He says his prescription isn’t absolutely necessary to have, but other patients might not be so lucky.

“My prescription is not critical,” Sanchez said. “It’s almost an elective one for me, but somebody that has a prescription that is critical, I can imagine that they’re in kind of fire straits right now.”

Lovelace says as it works to bring its systems back online, each hospital will continue to evaluate the situation.

The Lovelace Westside Hospital has stopped diverting patients, with the exception of ICU or critical care patients. Lovelace Regional in Roswell is also no longer diverting patients.

Lovelace shared the following statement with KOB 4:

“Lovelace Westside Hospital has moved off of divert with the exception of ICU or critical care patients. Lovelace Regional Hospital in Roswell is off of divert completely.

Divert status, which means hospitals have asked local ambulance services to transport patients in need of emergency care to other area ERs, is a common practice nationwide and helps ensure that critically ill patients have immediate access to the most appropriate level of care. It is not unusual for a hospital to go on and off divert multiple times during flu season, COVID surges, natural disasters or even a large trauma event. 

As we work to bring our systems back online, each hospital will continue to evaluate its ability to safely care for critically ill patients in its Emergency Room. Because this is rapidly changing and dependent upon a number of factors, we will continue to update our status as the situation changes. All hospitals are continuing to provide a medical screening exam and stabilizing care to any patients arriving at our Emergency Departments.”

UNM Health shared the following statement:

“UNM Hospital is aware of a network outage affecting Lovelace Health System.  Since Thursday, ambulance traffic has been diverted away from Lovelace to other health care centers including UNM Hospital.  Over the holiday weekend, the UNM Hospital Incident Management Team met and put a surge plan in place for anticipated higher than usual patient care demands for the next few days.  We thank our UNM Hospital teams for the extra work to care for our patients and helping support our broader community health care needs.”

Presbyterian shared the following statement:

“Presbyterian facilities in the Albuquerque metro have experienced unusually high patient volumes throughout the Thanksgiving holiday and continuing this week. We have called in additional staff and providers to assist and are continuing to care for our patients.”