Beaumont ends planning vulnerability that allowed people to ‘skip the line’ for vaccinations

The Beaumont Health System IT team detected and stopped unusual activity related to COVID-19 online vaccination planning on Saturday, the hospital said on Sunday.

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The unusual activity occurred on Beaumont’s Epic electronic medical record system. The Beaumont team determined that a user took advantage of a vulnerability in the Epic scheduling tool and publicly shared an unauthorized scheduling path that allowed 2,700 people to ‘skip the line’ and register at an unauthorized vaccination appointment.

Beaumont cancels all appointments that have taken the unauthorized route.

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Beaumont has notified Epic’s national headquarters so they can communicate with other healthcare systems to prevent this from happening elsewhere.

Beaumont said anyone’s personal data or hospital records was not compromised in the vulnerability. The route simply allowed users to schedule an unauthorized date that bypassed current Michigan mandates.

“These appointments violate the ethical distribution framework created by Beaumont based on the mandatory vaccine guidelines of the State of Michigan. We regret that 2,700 people in our community were victims of this unfortunate incident, ”said Hans Keil, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer of Beaumont Health. “We remain committed to vaccinating as many people as possible who meet state guidelines. We are also advising the Michigan Hospital Association and other Michigan health systems of this issue. ”

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