After a Site-Wide Cyberattack, Hillel Yaffe Medical Center’s Laundry Service reinforced protection against hospital ransomware attacks by shifting Workwear Management to the Polytex Cloud.
The Hillel Yaffe Medical Center, located in Hadera, Israel, is a major public hospital serving a diverse population of about 450,000 people. What started out in 1957 in a few wooden shacks has grown into a state- of-the art, comprehensive hospital campus with more than 25 divisions and units; a significant candidate for hospital ransomware attacks.
With approximately 2400 employees working in three shifts around the clock, the Hillel Yaffe laundry service is constantly under demand to provide clean uniforms in the right sizes and colors.
Its workwear management processes had consistently worked very well since the first Polytex automated workwear dispensing and collection units were installed in 2019. But when Hillel Yaffe, along with several other Israeli hospitals, were targeted with hospital ransomware attacks in October 2021, the mass disruption affected all departments and computerized systems, including the hospital’s 15 Polytex units.
Within hours, employees’ magnetic cards no longer worked, blocking them from returning used uniforms or getting clean ones.
Without the automated system, Limor Yaacov Bar Or, the hospital’s Textile Manager, and her staff were forced to manually distribute uniforms at the beginning of each shift. Personnel stationed at each unit handed out uniforms and wrote down what each person took and returned. This meant being present from 5:00 a.m. until midnight daily, including over the weekends. “It became hell around the clock when the attack happened and the machines didn’t work,” she says.
Limor quickly saw that moving management of the Polytex systems to the cloud would solve the immediate problem by ending the reliance on the hospital IT systems, which continued to be disrupted. She immediately reached out to Polytex and began the internal approval process to upgrade to the latest version of Polytex software, Total Care Manager: Version 8 (PM8).
Providing reliable and secure cloud connectivity and the highest level of data management, Total Care Manager: Version 8 meets the toughest requirements for performance and reliability, in full compliance with the SOC 2 and ISO27001 data security standards.
In addition to protecting operations against hospital ransomware attacks, Total Care Manager: Version 8 enhances workplace flexibility. It allows tracking of workwear consumption, usage trends and inventory levels via a simple, easy-to-use web-based application that can be securely managed from anywhere. Scheduled and on-demand reports keep managers informed of workwear usage across the whole site.
Read about the increase in randsomeware attacks on healthcare organizations, and how hospitals can prepare for cyber attacks.
Although management approval was fast-tracked, it still took a week. But once the Polytex team got the okay, the upgrade to Total Care Manager: Version 8 was completed within a few days. Even though many other hospital systems were still paralyzed, workwear management services were immediately back up and running to everyone’s great relief and satisfaction.
“As soon as I gave Polytex the okay to move to the cloud, I didn’t deal with the topic anymore,” Limor says. “It was all done by the Polytex technicians, and they let me know when I could start using the units again. I don’t know what they did behind the scenes, and to be honest, I don’t care. I only care that the system works. And it does.”
As Total Care Manager: Version 8 does not rely on the hospital‘s IT network, Hillel Yaffe‘s Polytex units are now protected from any future cyberattacks that target other hospital systems.
In addition to cybersecurity protection, Limor values the freedom of being able to resolve issues remotely. “Murphy’s Law is that a problem always happens as soon as you get home or on a holiday or weekend,” she continues, “but now I don’t have to go in physically to deal with issues.”
And her team is happy too. “They’re enjoying it, everything flows, and I have peace of mind.”
It’s not just the crisis management that makes Limor a Polytex fan. She emphasizes that the service she has received over the years is one of the things that impresses her most. “Polytex has an amazing team. I get first-rate service, not like a standard supplier-customer relationship, but like their life depended on it. They may be the only ones in the country who provide this service, and could deliver it with a take it or leave it attitude, but they don’t. They give service as if they have insane competition in the field.
She concludes: “I switched to the new program essentially because I was forced to, but in retrospect, I would have made that decision before, without a doubt.”
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