Quick Take
A network outage that shut down Watsonville Community Hospital's internet connection and electronic systems used for patient charts and prescription notifications continued into a fourth day Monday. The hospital has been operating on a paper system as third-party IT specialists investigate the outage’s cause, which began Friday.
Watsonville Community Hospital was temporarily operating on a paper system Monday after the hospital’s computer networks went down Friday.
The network outage began Friday evening, shutting down the hospital’s internet connection and its electronic systems used for patient charts and prescription notifications, said Nancy Gere, Watsonville Community Hospital’s public information officer. The outage was still ongoing as of publication time Monday afternoon.
The emergency room, inpatient and outpatient services have not been affected by the network outage, and patients are still able to access their own medical records.
“I’d like to reassure the public that the hospital is open and functioning fully. We’re just temporarily on a paper system, which we’re working around the clock to rectify that situation and get back up online,” Gere said. “Patients should be assured, if they need to come to the emergency room or need to come for an appointment, absolutely, come on in.”
There is not an exact cause for the outage, said Gere. The hospital has brought in third-party information technology specialists to investigate whether the hospital was the victim of a cyberattack, she said.
“They are working right now on investigating the source of the IT disruption,” Gere said. “They are helping us confirm the impact on all of our systems and to help restore functionality to our systems as soon as possible, which is obviously the goal.”
There was no definite timeline for the hospital’s network to be restored, she said.
Once hospital officials realized on Friday evening that computer systems were starting to go down, the hospital initiated its “downtime protocols,” which means staff switch to using paper-based patient charts and issuing paper prescriptions to patients rather than electronically submitting them to pharmacies.
Hospital staff are already familiar with this protocol, said Gere, which the hospital uses any time it updates its IT system or performs maintenance on the network.
“We’re just so appreciative of our staff. They’ve really stepped up. And as always, the patient is first, and that’s their main priority,” she said. “Everybody’s rolling up their sleeves and doing what needs to be done to provide proper care and safe care for our patients.”
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