Ambulance service resumed at Brockton Hospital on Wednesday, officials said, a week after a cyberattack forced widespread system outages and prompted the hospital to divert ambulances to other emergency facilities.
The hospital, owned by Signature Healthcare, began accepting ambulances as of about 8 a.m. Monday, marking a significant step toward normal operations after the hospital declared a “code black” after detecting “suspicious activity” on part of its network April 6.
“Needless to say, our priority is to ensure that all patients receive the highest caliber healthcare, particularly anyone experiencing a medical emergency,” said Bob Haffey, chief executive of Signature Healthcare Brockton Hospital. “We have reached this important milestone in system recovery and restoration of services after the cyber incident as a direct result of the round-the-clock work of our staff.”
The hospital took its information systems offline as a precaution after the suspicious activity appeared last week. Officials have not released further details about the network activity but said it is under investigation, and the FBI and State Police were notified.
The outage has forced doctors and nurses to revert to paper records and other manual processes, slowing care and disrupting some services.
Even as the emergency department remained open to walk-in patients, the loss of the hospital’s electronic systems created major challenges, including the ability to fill prescriptions while staff relied on handwritten documentation and faxed communications to coordinate care.
Meanwhile, nearby hospitals such as South Shore Hospital and Boston Medical Center South absorbed diverted patients and emergency calls.
The announcement Wednesday signals progress, but hospital officials cautioned that the recovery is ongoing. Some systems and processes remain offline and will be gradually restored in the coming days as part of what Haffey described as a “phased approach” focused on stability and security, according to the statement.
The hospital said it continues to work with outside cybersecurity experts, who are conducting a forensic invesitigation into the incident. Officials have not publicly said whether the attack involved ransomware or whether any patient data was compromised.
The timeline for full restoration remains unclear. Hospital officials have said “downtime” procedures could persist for a couple of weeks.
“We are grateful to our employees, partners, and community for their patience, flexibility, and dedication throughout this challenging time,” the hospital’s statement said.
The cybersecurity issue comes as Brockton Hospital continues to recover from past disruptions, including a 2023 fire that previously closed the facility.
It is just the latest healthcare facility to come under a cyber breach.
In 2024, the Change Healthcare cyberattack disrupted prescriptions, lab reports, and billing in New Hampshire. The global CrowdStrike outage later that year pushed hospitals and EMS crews in the Boston area into manual operations.
In 2022, Christopher Wray, then the director of the FBI, revealed that hackers linked to the Iranian government had attempted to breach Boston Children’s Hospital the year before, though authorities said the attack was stopped before it caused damage.
Nick Stoico can be reached at nick.stoico@globe.com.