According to information provided to hospital staff and obtained by CBC News, a “hardware problem” was discovered around 5 a.m. Friday, resulting in a network failure that affected several software systems. As a result, the hospital grayed out a critical infrastructure failure code, which remained in place Friday afternoon. Affected systems included: EPIC (an electronic health record management system), PAC (image archiving and communication systems), Cerner (a medical software suite), Rhapsody and SPOK Mobile paging. “An incident command center has been established and operations teams are working on outage procedures for all affected TOH sites and our regional partners,” said information provided to TOH staff Friday morning. Staff were told that TOH did not expect anything to change until “at least” noon.
Systems began to come back online before noon
A doctor who declined to be identified because she was not authorized to speak told CBC News that staff can continue to administer medication without computers. Health care staff outside the General Campus told CBC that some systems were starting to come back online and were putting workarounds in place, such as printing things and calling patients with results instead of emailing them. An email to staff at 11:50 am. reported that systems were back up but advised staff not to log in immediately. Amanda Holroyd, administrative assistant for TOH, said the issue affected “most of the hospital” and systems were back online before noon. Multiple requests to TOH for comment had not been returned as of Friday afternoon. Her partner Isobel Salole was able to get his blood drawn at the General campus on Friday morning despite the network failure, but said other patients were not so lucky. (CBC)
“Very unfortunate,” says the visitor
Isabelle Salole said she showed up at the hospital Friday morning with her husband, who needed blood for a transfusion early next week. They managed to get everything done just before the hospital shut down the entire lab until Tuesday morning, he said. People who showed up without printed copies of the checks weren’t so lucky, Salole said. “It’s very unfortunate, and I guess it’s true of the entire Ottawa hospital system,” he said. “We were very lucky to get the blood test.” Mary McEwen, who was at the General campus to help her mother, said a doctor had to walk into another room to retrieve some imaging, but otherwise didn’t notice much of a difference in their care. “It seems to be a very well-oiled machine. The nurses I’ve talked to are adjusting. It’s pretty easy to get things done on paper,” McEwen said.
