Hospitals, Health IT

HCA says hardware storage glitch behind EHR outage

An HCA spokesman said the issue primarily impacted its Florida facilities. HCA manages about 50 hospitals and 37 surgical centers in the state, according to its website.

Hospital Corporation of America‘s electronic health record outage over the weekend was caused by a hardware storage glitch, according to the for-profit hospital system. It’s reminiscent of a similar problem that affected Boston Children’s Hospital earlier this year.

An emailed statement from an HCA spokesman said the shutdown had been resolved and that staff were able to work around it.

“Sunday morning we experienced a hardware storage issue that limited the use of our electronic health record at some of our hospitals, primarily in Florida. Since then, full access has been restored using our existing alternate data center strategy. While working to fix this issue, which did not affect patient care, we used other systems and processes we have in place. We appreciate the patience and diligence of our caregivers.”

HCA has a huge presence in Florida, where it manages about 50 hospitals and 37 surgical centers, according to its website.

The outage underscores the need for hospitals to have the necessary training in place to cope with unexpected glitches that can screw up EHR access and put patient safety at risk. As hospitals continue to shift from paper-based to digital medical records, these outages won’t be limited to the EHR newbies. But the hospitals that fare best in these situations will be the ones that have an effective and battle-tested protocol in place to respond to them.

Photo: Flicker user Billie Grace Ward

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