(Bloomberg) — Gary Baulos woke up at 3:30 a.m. Friday for open heart surgery to correct eight blockages. A phone call from the hospital in Paducah, Kentucky, soon changed his plans. The procedure would be rescheduled due to a global technological disruption that was hampering operations.
Bloomberg’s Most Read
The 73-year-old retiree made the most of the situation, having a breakfast of bacon, eggs and pancakes at an IHOP before heading home to Marion. “I guess I’ll do that another time,” he said.
Not everyone was so optimistic. Lydia, who asked that her last name not be used for privacy reasons, had her surgery canceled at University Hospital of Maryland. A waiting room full of patients and families received the news that operations were being suspended.
Lydia, who needed the surgery to be able to continue dialysis, said many people were upset after spending time and money and missing work to get to the hospital. She has not yet been offered another spot.
Limited access
They are among dozens of patients whose medical care has been suspended as health systems around the world adjust to ensure the availability of emergency services. Digital disruption limited access to patient records, disrupted telephone services, and shut down computer systems and workstations.
Many hospitals have resorted to using handwritten records after a digital outage that wasted vital resources from air travel to emergency services. Centers including Banner Health in Phoenix and Boston-based Mass General Brigham warned it was affecting patient care. Ambulances in Dallas were unable to automatically alert emergency rooms about incoming patients, while 911 operators in New Hampshire could see calls but were unable to answer them.
In the UK, National Health Service GPs have had difficulty accessing blood tests, blood tests and patient histories after global IT problems hit a system used to book patient appointments and check medical records .
CrowdStrike
The cyber fiasco, the result of a faulty CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. software update that took down Microsoft Corp. systems, devastated airports, clinics and financial networks around the world in a stark reminder of the universal dependence on properly functioning software. Health facilities from New York to London to Paris have buckled under pressure.
Hospitals that administer Epic Systems Corp.’s gold standard electronic health record system. were harmed by the update. While it did not directly affect Epic’s software or services, it caused technical problems that prevented healthcare providers from using the systems, the company said.
The problem began after midnight central time and “causes servers and workstations to crash and get stuck in a reboot loop when trying to restart,” Epic said in a message to customers that was seen by Bloomberg.
An Epic spokesperson said “we can help customers monitor system activity and prioritize servers, but unfortunately we are waiting on CrowdStrike updates like everyone else.”
Anesthetic Pause
The impact varied across the world. Some health systems have remained largely untouched, while others have experienced disruptions in technology, communications and service providers that have led to delays or cancellations, said John Riggi, national cybersecurity risk advisor for the American Hospital Association, in a statement sent by and -mail.
Baptist Health in Kentucky, where Baulos was originally scheduled for surgery on Friday, said the situation hampered normal operations. He canceled non-emergency procedures while he works to resolve the issue and asked for patience and cooperation in a statement.
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York initially halted procedures requiring anesthesia, although surgical cases later resumed. The Mass General Brigham system, which includes some of Boston’s most prestigious Harvard-affiliated hospitals, said it was canceling elective procedures on Friday as it addressed computer problems.
Pittsburgh-based UPMC said it intervened early in the incident and that less than 10% of its Microsoft Windows-based devices were affected in some facilities. Patient care was not affected, the hospital system said.
University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein in northern Germany canceled elective procedures and closed outpatient clinics on Friday. The company was restarting systems in the afternoon and said it planned to resume normal operations on Monday.
Self-check-in for appointments upon arrival has been achieved at Paris Saint-Joseph hospital, where staff have begun personally directing patients to their appointments upon arrival.
The NHS said it has also resorted to low-tech measures to continue functioning.
The health system “has long-standing measures in place to manage the disruption, including the use of paper patient records and handwritten prescriptions, and the usual telephone systems to contact your GP,” a spokesperson for the health system said. NHS.
Farah Jameel, a doctor at the Museum of London Practice Centre, said that although some practices appear to have been able to use a workaround to access the affected systems, their practice has been deleted.
“I still can’t access blood work, I can’t access images, I can’t access his past records, so I can’t really make a comprehensive plan at this point,” she said in an interview. For patients with complex medical histories “it’s quite unsafe,” Jameel said. The GP fears the delay will accumulate, adding that the longer the system has been affected “the greater the impact on patient care”.
Nikita Kanani, a family doctor in London and former medical director of primary care at NHS England, said some doctors were having to do in-person screening and then fill out handwritten notes and prescriptions. Doing all this without access to blood tests or imaging results was “risky,” she said. General practitioners were not given any timeframe for resolving the situation, she said in an interview.
–With assistance from Naomi Kresge, Robert Langreth, Catherine Larkin, Madison Muller and Brody Ford.
(Add comment from Amerian Hospital Association in 12th paragraph. An earlier version corrected the reason for surgery in the fourth paragraph)
Bloomberg Businessweek Most Read
©2024 Bloomberg LP
