Quick Take
A network outage that shut down Watsonville Community Hospital’s internet connection and its electronic systems is expected to last several more days, according to hospital spokesperson Nancy Gere. The hospital has brought in third-party IT specialists to investigate the cause of the outage, which began Friday evening.
Watsonville Community Hospital will continue to work on a paper system as computer network outage is expected to last several more days, according to hospital spokesperson Nancy Gere.
The network outage began Friday evening, shutting down the hospital’s internet connection and its electronic systems used for patient charts and prescription notifications, Gere said. The outage was still ongoing as of Wednesday afternoon.
The emergency room, inpatient and outpatient services have not been affected by the network outage, and patients are still able to access their 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 told Lookout on Monday. “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 no exact cause for the outage, Gere said. The hospital has brought in third-party information technology specialists to investigate whether the hospital was the victim of a cyberattack, 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.
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