Source: Radio New Zealand
Coast to Coast Healthcare chair Dr Tim Malloy. RNZ / Adriana Weber
Northland GPs are frustrated by what they say are mixed messages about the extent of the Manage My Health data breach.
More than 80,000 of the 125,000 patients affected by the ransomware attack are based in Northland – the only region where Health NZ itself uses Manage My Health to share information with patients, including hospital discharge summaries, outpatient clinic letters and referral notifications.
Coast to Coast Health Care chair Dr Tim Malloy, who oversees eight practices in Northland, told Summer Report it had been difficult to give patients accurate information because the information from the company kept changing.
“Our practice has had on four separate occasions been notified of a different number of affected individuals, and that’s caused an element of frustration in that it’s difficult to assess even the extent of the problem.”
Patients were anxious and scared, but generally polite, and shared their doctors’ frustration over a lack of detailed information, he said.
“We go to a huge amount of effort to manage cyber security and then to have a breach like this, if you like, through a backdoor is really disconcerting and really knocks one’s confidence.”
Malloy said he had been assured this particular hole now been plugged.
Health NZ group director of operations for Northland, Alex Pimm, said the agency was looking for funding to allow general practices to provide consultation to patients whose data had been stolen.
“While Health NZ’s own data systems have not been compromised, any issue involving patient information is taken very seriously.”
Manage My Health has been approached for comment.
Company responds to questions
On Friday, the company said more than half of all impacted patients had now received a notification email, and all patients who were not affected could also see that in their Manage My Health app.
A Manage My Health spokesperson said “in a small number of cases” users were notified that they were impacted, but the app showed that they were not impacted. RNZ / Finn Blackwell
Many users however were struggling to get any information, with the website repeatedly crashing and the 0800 number apparently overloaded, while others reported receiving contradictory information.
A Manage My Health spokesperson said “in a small number of cases” users were notified that they were impacted, but the app showed that they were not impacted.
“This was caused by the timing of the emails being sent, and the app being updated. This has been updated and all users see the correct details in the app after they have been notified.”
Some patients told RNZ they had received blank emails. A spokesperson said this was due to some clients not displaying the email “correctly”.
“We have corrected this [and] are sending follow up emails where necessary.”
Overseas patients found they were blocked from accessing their accounts, which meant they could not implement the recommended security measures.
“Out of an abundance of caution, we limited the countries that can access [Manage My Health] to Britain, the United States, Australia and New Zealand during the incident and will gradually restore access internationally.”
In response to criticism from users that the website was repeatedly crashing, the spokesperson said it had been “standing up well, despite the large increase in traffic”.
“We increased capacity as much as possible at short notice to accommodate expected volumes.
“While some users have experienced some slowness, the application has been operational, and most users are getting the information they need. We ask people to have patience please and to not access the website unless they need to until this notification process is complete.”
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
