The health care system that operates St. Vincent’s Birmingham and five other facilities in the Birmingham metropolitan area reported Wednesday that it may have been the victim of a “cybersecurity incident” that has caused “ disruption to clinical operations.”

“On Wednesday, May 8, we detected unusual activity on select technology network systems, which we now believe is due to a cybersecurity event,” Ascension Health, which runs St. Vincent’s six facilities in the Birmingham metro – St. Vincent’s Birmingham, St. Vincent’s Blount, St. Vincent’s Chilton, St. Vincent’s East, St. Vincent’s St. Clair and St. Vincent’s One Nineteen.-, said in a statement. “At this time we continue to investigate the situation. We responded immediately, initiated our investigation and activated our remediation efforts. Access to some systems have been interrupted as this process continues.”

“Our care teams are trained for these kinds of disruptions and have initiated procedures to ensure patient care delivery continues to be safe and as minimally impacted as possible,” the system went on to say. “There has been a disruption to clinical operations, and we continue to assess the impact and duration of the disruption.”

Companies that do business with Ascension Health were recommended to temporarily suspend their “connection to the Ascension environment. We will inform our partners when it is appropriate to reconnect into our environment.”

Ascension Health said a “third-party expert,” Mandiant, has been tasked with helping the investigation.

“The appropriate authorities” have been notified of the incident, the health care system said.

“Together, we are working to fully investigate what information, if any, may have been affected by the situation,” Ascension Health said. “Should we determine that any sensitive information was affected, we will notify and support those individuals in accordance with all relevant regulatory and legal guidelines.”