‘It’s disheartening’: Local nurses struggle after cyberattack targeting payroll system

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Some hospitals still appear to be struggling weeks after a corporate cyberattack. The December attack targeted the Kronos payroll system, which is used by many health care groups.

A nurse at Ascension St. Vincent’s who wanted to stay anonymous said he’s been told his upcoming paychecks will be cut after the hospital says he was overpaid $3,600.

However, he insists his paychecks never looked larger than usual.

“It’s disheartening that I have to worry about this while I’m still battling COVID with my patients every day,” he said.

Another health care worker from Baptist Health told Action News Jax about a similar situation with his employer and Kronos.

Meanwhile, other hospitals like UF Health are assuring their workers that the Kronos problems are being resolved.

UF Health posted a video to YouTube Thursday, saying Kronos is now back up and running for current work hours.

“The three pay periods that we didn’t pay you correctly, we’re going to start the process of correcting that. I’m not exactly sure how long that’s going to take, but we’ll do that as quickly as we can,” UF Health CEO Russ Armistead said.

Action News Jax asked UF Health how it plans to correct the issue. Spokesperson Dan Leveton shared the following statement:

“All of the time card information was stored in the local time clocks but wasn’t sent to the cloud. Once it’s all working again they’re going to reconcile time cards and pay people whatever is owed. We have been paying everyone their base salary and even shift differential for most people it just involves overtime.”

As for the nurse at Ascension St. Vincent’s, he says he’s thinking this might be his sign to leave health care.

“We use this term ‘health care hero,’ but they sure aren’t treating us like health care heroes right now,” he said.

Ascension St. Vincent’s responded to Action News Jax later Friday afternoon. Spokesperson Kyle Sieg provided the following statement:

“Now that Kronos has recently restored access for its thousands of customers following the ransomware attack that impacted its timekeeping and scheduling system, we have been able to reconcile our associates’ payroll for the three pay periods impacted by the Kronos outage. Associates who were underpaid as a result of the Kronos outage were paid their underpayment amount on Jan. 21, 2022. Associates who were overpaid as a result of the Kronos outage will be asked to repay the amount they were overpaid beginning in February through payroll deductions or, if the associate so chooses, application of paid time off accrued hours. We will provide flexibility on timing and method of repayment for all associates.”

Action News Jax received the following response from a Baptist Health spokesperson:

“Having just recently regained access to Kronos data, Baptist Health has made great progress and will be able to turn on Kronos clocks ahead of schedule, next week. Throughout the downtime, our team members continued to be paid on time, using an average based on prior cycles. All pay will be fully “trued-up” after downtime timekeeping reconciliation—a time-consuming process which will begin in February.”

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