Nationwide IT outage leaves hospitals without EHRs
Healthcare systems, airlines, emergency services, banks, and more critical businesses are scrambling to recover after a nationwide IT system shutdown on Friday.
The culprit is a software update from CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity application used by companies nationwide. While there is now a fix in place, dozens of hospitals all over the U.S. were forced to operate on paper systems and many had to cancel non-emergency care services due to the slowdown.
Specifically, many hospitals and health systems operating on Epic were unable to access their electronic health record or other services, as the issue with CrowdStrike ultimately caused downstream technical snags that disrupted access to Epic’s systems. Ultimately, this forced those hospitals to resort to emergency pen-and-paper patient throughput and care delivery until systems are restored.
The glitch also forced the delay of flights worldwide, shut down financial transactions, and disrupted 911 dispatchers. Any business that uses Windows and CrowdStrike was potentially subject to the issue, while those who run on Linux and Mac were unaffected.
The restoration is ongoing, CrowdStrike said, as the company is actively delivering fixes to customers.
“We understand the gravity of the situation and are deeply sorry for the inconvenience and disruption. We are working with all impacted customers to ensure that systems are back up and they can deliver the services their customers are counting on,” CrowdStrike said in a statement.
Symptoms of the error include “hosts experiencing a bugcheck\blue screen error” related to the use of CrowdStrike’s Falcon security system. The error does not appear to affect all Windows users, so if systems are operating normally, there is no need to seek a fix.
Organizations are advised to contact CrowdStrike customer support to walk through getting systems back online. CrowdStrike said the outages are not a result of a cyberattack and their security services are operating normally.
Chad is an award-winning writer and editor with over 15 years of experience working in media. He has a decade-long professional background in healthcare, working as a writer and in public relations.