Beaumont shuts down scheduling vulnerabilities allowing people to ‘queue’ for vaccinations

Beaumont Health System’s IT team discovered and halted unusual activity related to online COVID-19 vaccination schedules on Saturday, the hospital announced Sunday.

READ: Some Michiganders are cutting the line for the COVID vaccine for those in need

The unusual activity took place on Beaumont’s Epic electronic health record system. The Beaumont team determined that a user was taking advantage of an Epic scheduling tool vulnerability and publicly shared an unauthorized planning path that allowed 2,700 people to “queue up” and register for an unauthorized vaccination appointment.

Beaumont will cancel all events that used the unauthorized path.

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Beaumont notified the national Epic headquarters so that it could communicate with other health systems to prevent this from happening elsewhere.

Beaumont said no person’s personal information or hospital records have been compromised by the vulnerability. The path simply allowed users to schedule an unauthorized appointment that bypassed the current Michigan mandates.

“These appointments violate the ethical distribution framework that Beaumont has created based on the Michigan State’s mandatory vaccine guidelines. We regret that 2,700 people in our community have become victims of this unfortunate incident, ”said Hans Keil, Beaumont Health’s senior vice president and chief information officer. “We remain committed to vaccinating as many people as possible who meet state guidelines. We are also notifying the Michigan Hospital Association and other Michigan health systems of the problem. ”

READ: Michigan COVID-19 Vaccinations: How to Find Appointments, Stages Information