Earlier this week, BJC HealthCare, based in St. Louis, experienced a computer outage that affected its operations systemwide, according to a St. Louis Post-Dispatch report.
Here are eight things to know about the outage.
1. The outage began on Tuesday at 3 p.m. and lasted until Wednesday at 11 a.m., according to the report.
2. As a result of the outage, all 13 of BJC's hospitals were unable to access email, EHRs and registration and scheduling systems.
3. Executive Vice President Rich Liekweg told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch patient and employee data were not compromised during the down period.
4. During the down time, the health system limited the number of transfer patients it would accept. Transferring patients within the hospitals also became difficult; the outage affected the system's bed tracking program.
5. The health system reverted to paper for patient charting and registration for the duration of the outage.
6. BJC is working with vendors to repair any lingering issues. The root cause of the outage has yet to be determined, according to the report.
7. BJC plans to switch to a different clinical software system in 2017, but the process has yet to begin.
8. In March, BJC announced plans to implement the Epic EMR across its entire system.