While I agree hospitals should have protocols to handle these situations, it's just not that straight forward. These IT systems are big and complex, and not sta

While I agree hospitals should have protocols to handle these situations, it's just not that straight forward. These IT systems are big and complex, and not standardized. I worked on critical systems in the energy sector and while we were buried in federal compliance paperwork, the systems and software were always a target that was evolving and hard to keep up with. The energy management system was a huge bureaucratic battle between IT and engineering and there were compromises made (that I didn't always agree with) for the sake of support and maintainability within the IT tech landscape. For compliance reasons, and because the system is "offline", upgrades and patches were really challenging and honestly kind of terrifying. The risk of taking something down and impacting grid operations was harrowing. It really made our small team reticent to touch anything. I don't envy these hospitals, it's a really tough battle to ensure your systems are always up to date, locked down, and operational. Also, a hospital going down is not a small problem. My wife is an ICU doctor for a large hospital and her patients' are sometimes hanging on by a thread. If they lost their EHR and patient history, I imagine that would present a really scary challenge. It's not just financial.