The University of New Mexico Health System sent every ambulance elsewhere and cancelled all clinic appointments on Monday after a cybersecurity issue spread across its Health Sciences Center.
UNM Health confirmed the disruption itself in a newsroom notice dated October 26. Ambulance traffic was diverted to other hospitals, appointments at every clinic were scratched for the day, and patients were told not to come to UNM Health facilities. Officials directed emergencies to 911 and asked patients with non-urgent needs to wait. Non-essential staff and students in the School of Medicine, College of Pharmacy, College of Nursing and College of Population Health were ordered off campus for the remainder of Monday, while clinical and essential employees stayed.
The health system did not describe the cause, say whether patient records were reached, or give a restoration timeline.
Ambulance diversion is the emergency declaration
Redirecting every inbound ambulance is the clearest sign a hospital has lost the systems clinicians rely on, and it pushes the strain onto Albuquerque’s other emergency departments. UNM’s notice came hours after the first reports and covered the whole Health Sciences Center, including the UNM Comprehensive Cancer Center and Carrie Tingley Hospital. New Mexico’s only academic medical center operating partly on paper leaves a wide gap in statewide specialty and trauma coverage.
Healthcare leaders should treat a full ambulance diversion at a flagship facility as a regional event. Confirm alternate receiving capacity before your own outage, and pre-write the patient communication that tells people where to go.
