A grieving mother is suing a hospital in Alabama after a ransomware attack led to the death of her newborn baby girl.
According to the court filing, Teiranni Kidd was induced on July 17, 2019, without knowing that a ransomware attack at Springhill Memorial Hospital shut the network down and limited the ability of staff to treat patients.
Her baby was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck but it took the neonatologist eight minutes to arrive.
Nicko Silar was diagnosed with brain dysfunction caused by lack of oxygen, organ failure, and other ailments. Sadly, she passed away on April 16, 2020.
It was on July 9 when Springhill Memorial Hospital first acknowledged the cyberattack and said it wouldn’t affect patient care.
The hospital said it shut down its network on July 16, the day Kidd arrived at the hospital with ‘no knowledge of the effect’ of the ransomware attack.
Without the computer and network systems, nurses and doctors communicated via text messages.
“We have no computer charting for I don’t know how long,” one manager told a nurse, the court papers said.
“They are printing out the labs in the laboratory and sending them by paper,” another employee texted.
The “ineffective and inoperable” system of the hospital contributed to baby Nicko’s injuries and death, the lawsuit said.
“Upon information and belief, the only fetal tracing that was available to healthcare providers during Teiranni’s admission was the paper record at her bedside,” it stated.
“Because numerous electronic systems were compromised by the cyberattack, fetal tracing information was not accessible at the nurses’ station or by any physician or other healthcare provider who was not physically present in Teiranni’s labor and delivery room.”
The lawsuit also said that the hospital was negligent in failing to use a fetal scalp monitor that could’ve been used for fetal tracing during delivery, adding that staff didn’t recognize the severity of the situation.
Delivery and labor nurses failed “to adequately monitor, observe, report, treat, and respond to exigent circumstances that should have been known to nursing personnel based on Nicko’s fetal tracings and/or would have been known to nursing personnel had adequate fetal tracing been performed with a fetal scalp monitor,” the lawsuit said.point 593 | 1
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