CVS Vets extended IT Outage/Corporate Vets

[Suncat]

Hi all,

Our vets were bought by CVS sometime ago, CVS own so many vets its the focus of the current Market Investigation into Vet services/monopolies by the CMA. So like many I've wondered where the take over of many many vets by large corporates leaves us...

But I would have thought it would have at least left our vets with a fit for purpose IT system, with a business continuity plan and back up options. Nope.

CVS VET systems have been experiencing massive IT outages/issues for most of last week. Has anyone else been affected by it? Our vet was being told it would be Monday before it was fixed, they don't have any digital functions, no email, diaries, file access, I'm not sure how they are functioning. Apparently lots of other CVS practices are also affected with a variety of issues. So I've paid out a lot of money recently for fees that now (thankfully!) are subject to an insurance claim... except I can't get the vet section completed and in for a week! And I can't get the recent worm count results I'm waiting for or the report/update from the specialist my horse's x-rays went to. I'm sure if I needed a vet, they can get there, but they are managing everything on paper.

I think that's pretty unacceptable... though full disclosure, I run national IT systems for a living. I'd expect business critical services to be restored in 4hrs or so at that level of enterprise (plus the life and limb factor!) - not a week.

So a moan really, but I am thinking of putting a complaint in to CVS somehow... but anyone else notice this?

 

[rabatsa]

I had an out of hours visit with the dog on Saturday night. As the computer system was playing up follow up appointments at the nearest vet surgery could not be made, same vet practice, and I had to trail further away to the vet hospital for a three day check up. I knew that everything was healing well and felt that this visit was completely unnecessary, just to rub salt in the wound.

 

[Tiddlypom]

Ah, that’s interesting, a local small animal vet practice has had all its on line access down for a while. No access for the vets to your pet’s clinical history, any emails, anything . Very alarming and it must affect the care that can be given.

ETA Just checked, it is indeed part of the CVS group.

 

[Lucky Snowball]

Hi all,

Our vets were bought by CVS sometime ago, CVS own so many vets its the focus of the current Market Investigation into Vet services/monopolies by the CMA. So like many I've wondered where the take over of many many vets by large corporates leaves us...

But I would have thought it would have at least left our vets with a fit for purpose IT system, with a business continuity plan and back up options. Nope.

CVS VET systems have been experiencing massive IT outages/issues for most of last week. Has anyone else been affected by it? Our vet was being told it would be Monday before it was fixed, they don't have any digital functions, no email, diaries, file access, I'm not sure how they are functioning. Apparently lots of other CVS practices are also affected with a variety of issues. So I've paid out a lot of money recently for fees that now (thankfully!) are subject to an insurance claim... except I can't get the vet section completed and in for a week! And I can't get the recent worm count results I'm waiting for or the report/update from the specialist my horse's x-rays went to. I'm sure if I needed a vet, they can get there, but they are managing everything on paper.

I think that's pretty unacceptable... though full disclosure, I run national IT systems for a living. I'd expect business critical services to be restored in 4hrs or so at that level of enterprise (plus the life and limb factor!) - not a week.

So a moan really, but I am thinking of putting a complaint in to CVS somehow... but anyone else notice this?

I was in IT and agree, 4 hrs should get a backup system with generator if necessary. Very poor.

 

[Landcruiser]

It's a real headache when the system goes down. Our place is a corporate but not CVS - we have outages now and then, a couple of time they've been across the whole group. EVERYTHING is on the computer, so without access we can't see clinical records or accounts, or the diary - in essence we are buggered. In practice we limp along as a small animal practice, the vets treat what comes through the door and hand write labels if they dispense meds, and jot down clinical notes. On reception we do the same, but can't take payments or book/move/see appointments.

Over Easter, Petplan vet website was down for a week, so they now have a big backlog of claims/pre authorisations, as do vets trying to action those things.

My equine vets are CVS, their systems were down last week, according to a post they did on FB.

Technology is great, as long as it works...

 

[Goldenstar]

Yes it affected me on Tuesday when H was ill .
Vet had to go to another sit to look at history and then all was managed without any hassle to me .
I know they had to run his bloods at their small animal site as the computer outage prevented in being done in the equine unit .
It was all managed with no hassle to me and the horses pts was managed quickly and very very professionally.
I would say there nothing they could have done better to make Tuesday was easy on everybody as it could be .

I was told it’s was virus that had entered their system from another site a lab I think.

 

[DirectorFury]

I think that's pretty unacceptable... though full disclosure, I run national IT systems for a living. I'd expect business critical services to be restored in 4hrs or so at that level of enterprise (plus the life and limb factor!) - not a week.

I’m also in tech and agree it’s unacceptable. This level of delay sounds like they’ve been ransomwared and they don’t have good backups to restore from (or the backups weren’t sufficiently isolated and also got locked).

 

[Redders]

I am at an IVC practice, competitor to CVS (I don’t care about that but just to give you an idea of the company sizes). For a period of 11 (I think) days, we had no IT. Only got it back at the start of this week. No internet. No phones except one single analogue phone. We shared four laptops that allowed us to access the patient records but that was between all of us. It only affected one of our sites, but that was the main hospital. It was a NIGHTMARE! Took us twice as long to do anything because everything is IT based these days. Totally unacceptable. I was whining ‘we are owned by one of the largest corporates in the EU! Who have investors who are billionaires! All I want is some damn infrastructure to do my job!!’
I was fuming initially, then I reached some bizarre form of acceptance that this was now my life for the time being so I just had to get on with it rather than stressing. It turned out it was some main line BT fault that their engineers had to sort.
Anyway, was a nightmare. We still managed to deliver quality vet care on the ground, but it was a rough period!

 

[meleeka]

I was waiting for a prescription which obviously hasn’t been done. I’m guessing they can’t do a written perception if they have no IT? I don’t want to have to buy from the vets, but I might have to now.

 

[The Xmas Furry]

Ah, that’s interesting, a local small animal vet practice has had all its on line access down for a while. No access for the vets to your pet’s clinical history, any emails, anything . Very alarming and it must affect the care that can be given.

ETA Just checked, it is indeed part of the CVS group.

View attachment 137116

A localish equine vets with horsepital attached that I used to use till 20 yrs ago (and worked there a bit in theatre a hell of a lot longer ago) is part of CVS, their website is 'tits up' with just basic code from front page and all links broken. Been like it all the last week.

 

[little_critter]

I’m not directly affected but I’ve seen a FB post from a local - ish vet practice saying they are having IT problems. Not sure if they are CVS

Just checked, yes they are CVS and their website looks to be bare bones only.

 

[Bonnie Allie]

Absolutely not acceptable in 2024 to have “IT problems”. I’m also in IT and if I was a client of these practices right now I would be very concerned about my PII data.

Not only should you be making a complaint, I would be asking for confirmation of breach/loss of data. It’s legislated as reportable, carries large fines and there are steps that should have been in place for reporting out to clients.

Remember you can report your concerns yourself to your Govt body and they will investigate. Cyber is an enterprise risk and public companies are bound by legislation to act.

 

[SEL]

It's horrendous for the people on the ground but that long a delay sounds like their business recovery plans weren't in place - & that's not acceptable

 

[Pebble101]

They have had a cyber attack so took systems offline temporarily.

 

[meleeka]

They have had a cyber attack so took systems offline temporarily.

Strange that they haven’t got them all back yet? There was a message last night to say that phones were back but practice management system still down.

 

[ycbm]

They have had a cyber attack so took systems offline temporarily.

Also ex IT here.

No excuse. It shouldn't have been possible for the attackers to get in. And even if it was through an operating system "hole" in a fully up to date OS, and not their fault, then they should have been able to shut the whole system down, wipe it and reload it within hours as part of a preplanned disaster recovery procedure.

And that's before we start asking why they are operating a model with practice data accessible to attack somehow at a central point, leaving branches which operate as separate businesses in geographically distanced towns unable to access their own client data or their own diaries. If they had a properly distributed model with branch data held locally then the individual vets would have been able to carry on as normal and a batch update to the central system could have been done when the central system was back up.

This isn't rocket science, it's a standard model. Or it was in my day.

What an almighty cockup!
.

 

[Goldenstar]

I am at an IVC practice, competitor to CVS (I don’t care about that but just to give you an idea of the company sizes). For a period of 11 (I think) days, we had no IT. Only got it back at the start of this week. No internet. No phones except one single analogue phone. We shared four laptops that allowed us to access the patient records but that was between all of us. It only affected one of our sites, but that was the main hospital. It was a NIGHTMARE! Took us twice as long to do anything because everything is IT based these days. Totally unacceptable. I was whining ‘we are owned by one of the largest corporates in the EU! Who have investors who are billionaires! All I want is some damn infrastructure to do my job!!’
I was fuming initially, then I reached some bizarre form of acceptance that this was now my life for the time being so I just had to get on with it rather than stressing. It turned out it was some main line BT fault that their engineers had to sort.
Anyway, was a nightmare. We still managed to deliver quality vet care on the ground, but it was a rough period!

I have to say that H’s care was not in any way impacted by the CVS problem it dealt with the urgency it merited and no delays where experienced in dealing with it .
The practice did a good job .

 

[Pebble101]

We have a problem locally as for the second time in as many months someone has stolen the cable from underground together with the manhole cover. No phones for at least a week.

 

[Nasicus]

IT Infrastructure here, we would be b*llocked within an inch of our lives if something like this happened and it wasn't back up and running on DR within 4 hours.
I wonder if CVS have ever bothered with Penetration Testing

 

[meleeka]

IT Infrastructure here, we would be b*llocked within an inch of our lives if something like this happened and it wasn't back up and running on DR within 4 hours.
I wonder if CVS have ever bothered with Penetration Testing

You’d think so wouldn’t you? I’m slightly amazed that a company of their size, with their reliance on IT to run their business, wouldn’t have more robust systems in place, or at least the means to limit any effect.

 

[ycbm]

IT Infrastructure here, we would be b*llocked within an inch of our lives if something like this happened and it wasn't back up and running on DR within 4 hours.
I wonder if CVS have ever bothered with Penetration Testing

They probably think it's a sexual offence, from the sounds of it.
.

 

[reynold]

Pet owners face chaos after cyber attack at major vet company

Pet owners have been warned over ongoing disruption from a cyber attack at a major vet group, after the incident forced it to take IT systems offline.

uk.yahoo.com

 

[DirectorFury]

I'm placing my bet that their customer data was all stored on a central AWS instance, and someone c*cked up the security/IAM permissions on it.

 

[Nasicus]

The practice I'm with have regained access today, it's running slow apparently but at least it's *something*!

 

[twiggy2]

The vets i worked at got sold to CVS when i was still there and the system was a constant issue.
it looks like its got worse in the 6yrs since i left, qith what they charge and the prifits they make you woukd expect them to invest in a decent fit for purpose system.