After experiencing a cyberattack on Oct. 20, Hawaii Radiologic Associates announced on Monday it is officially open with limited imaging services at its three Big Island locations.
“We are excited to announce that all HRA offices and clinics are re-opening this week,” HRA Executive Director Ryan Parnell told the Tribune-Herald on Monday.
According to Parnell, operations will continue to ramp up throughout the week.
“We’ve been working long hours, seven days a week with teams of experts to get back to serving our community as quickly and securely as possible,” he said. “Our three-person IT team has been amazing and I’m thankful to have them.”
The first services to return at HRA will include breast biopsy and mammogram screenings.
“We’ve begun calling breast biopsy patients to see if they can come in,” said Parnell, who noted breast biopsy patients were the first group to return starting on Friday.
“We’re working on contacting as many screening mammogram patients as we can,” he added.
An investigation into the cyberattack is still on-going, and HRA has not yet provided information on what type of attack occurred, or whether any patient data was compromised.
HRA has started the process of contacting patients to reschedule appointments.
“Those looking to reschedule an appointment or schedule a new appointment with HRA will be able to do so next week,” said Parnell. “We’re using all phone and staff resources to begin contacting patients involuntarily canceled due to our outage.”
Rescheduled appointments will be prioritized chronologically, based on when the original appointment dates were scheduled.
HRA serves roughly 200 patients a day at its three locations, according to Parnell, and the closure resulted in patients seeking imaging services at both Hilo Medical Center and Kona Community Hospital.
“We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this disruption may have caused,” Parnell said. “We are looking forward to continuing our relationship with the community.”
Email Grant Phillips at gphillips@hawaiitribune-herald.com
