Middle TN mom deals with anxiety over baby delivery decision after Ascension cyberattack
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — A Middle Tennessee mother faces an unusual decision before she delivers her next baby: should she go to a hospital that was hit by a cyberattack?
Ascension representatives told News 2 that despite the hack, Ascension Saint Thomas Midtown delivered a near-record number of babies Tuesday, May 21.
Nicole Dye is about to have her second child. Her first baby was born during the COVID-19 pandemci, and now her second could be born in a hospital currently facing a nationwide cybersecurity issue.
Dye said she had a planned C-section at Ascension Saint Thomas Midtown scheduled for Friday, May 24. However, she had several concerns when she first heard the news of the May 8 ransomware attack on Ascension hospitals.
Cybersecurity issue disrupts operations at Ascension health care network
“What does that mean for everything logistically?” Dye said. “Like billing, working with insurance, making sure that everything is done correctly. I am having a scheduled C-section, so I am sure there will be a lot of paperwork involved in that.”
Dye added that she already has so much to think about as an expecting mother without adding a major hack to the list.
“Like the nurses, are they good nurses?” Dye asked. “How well do they take care of babies? The nursery…will I be able to put my baby in it so I can get some rest?”
Earlier this week, after consulting her OBGYN, Dye took to Facebook to hear personal stories from previous patients who delivered babies during the cyberattack.
‘Chaos’: Nurses, visitors describe conditions inside Ascension hospitals after cyberattack
“A lot of the responses were good,” Dye said. “People said they still had a good experience overall. Like they mentioned, the paperwork just having to be done manually, and people having to talk about their medications and bring everything written down, and then also lab work coming back, taking a while to come back.”
Dye told News 2 this helped with her final decision to keep her scheduled C-section at Ascension Saint Thomas Midtown.
“It made me feel better hearing that everything was still pretty much the same because I delivered at Saint Thomas previously and I had a really good experience, so I wanted to keep it there as much as possible,” Dye explained.
According to Ascension, when expecting mothers enter the hospital, nurses and doctors will proceed with what is known as the implemented downtown procedure. This means everything from dispensing medication to ordering and completing diagnostic tests will be tracked by hand.
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As of Wednesday, May 15, Ascension hospitals have brought in additional cybersecurity experts.
However, when the baby does arrive, Dye said she still plans to keep the newborn close: “I don’t know how much we’ll be letting the baby out of our sight. We have a lot of family, luckily, and a lot of friends that will be probably stopping by, so we’ll probably be relying on them, and then we’ll just kind of see how we feel about it once we’re there.”
According to Ascension’s website, there is no official timeline for its hospitals to return to normal.
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