Hospitals located near health care delivery organizations that are affected by ransomware attacks may experience more patients and constraints in resources that affect time-sensitive care for conditions such as acute stroke, a study found.

The research, published in JAMA Network Open, found significant increases in emergency department waiting room times, patients leaving without being seen and patients leaving against medical advice at hospitals located near facilities that were undergoing ransomware attacks.^[1]

There was also a significant increase in stroke code activations and confirmed strokes at those nearby hospitals during what the researchers termed “the attack phase” when compared with a control period that didn’t include a ransomware attack, the study found.

“These findings suggest that targeted hospital cyberattacks may be associated with disruptions of health care delivery at nontargeted hospitals within a community and should be considered a regional disaster,” wrote the University of California, San Diego, research team.