Several major U.S. hospitals experienced a global computer outage on Friday, forcing them to cancel surgeries and doctor’s appointments. Staffers at hospitals in New York and Boston reported difficulty accessing medical records and coordinating patient care. Dana-Farber Cancer Center in Boston had to ask patients to stay home and cancel non-emergency surgeries and procedures due to the severity of the outage. The outage was not a cyber attack, but rather a result of a routine software update that introduced a devastating bug into Windows computers. Hospitals impacted had to resort to offline solutions, such as writing patient notes and prescriptions by hand.
Despite the widespread outage, some hospitals were unaffected or experienced only minor disruptions in service. Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta and Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center in Columbus reported minimal impact on patient care. However, hospitals like Dana-Farber and Northwell Health in New York had to implement manual fixes to address the computer issues.
The University of Miami Health System warned patients of delays while their IT teams worked to resolve the problem. Duke University Health System in Durham, North Carolina, also reported essential computer functions being affected but clinics remained open. The incident highlighted the vulnerability of the health care sector to cyber attacks, with hospitals being targeted by ransomware hackers seeking payments to unlock computer systems. The outage disrupted hospital operations and required staff to implement alternative methods to provide patient care.
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