Dozens of hospitals across the country operated by Franklin, Tenn.-based Community Health Systems are experiencing IT outages after the accidental deletion of data storage linked to their Oracle Health EHRs.
The hospitals have gone into downtime procedures following the incident, reverting to paper for patient records. No patient data has been affected, officials say.
“While Cerner [now called Oracle Health] was conducting maintenance work at one of their data centers, Cerner engineers mistakenly deleted critical storage connected to a key database, leading to the outage,” Patrice Bordron, senior vice president and chief digital information officer of Community Health Systems, wrote in an email to staff April 23.
The affected hospitals include nearly 50 facilities operated by Community Health Systems. Mr. Bordron wrote that he expects the downtime procedures to remain in effect until the evening of April 28. A daily call will be held with hospital officials until the systems are back online.
“We understand that unexpected outages and downtime periods are challenging, so first, thanks to everyone who is taking the necessary steps to ensure patient care, safety, and hospital operations continue without disruption for your patients,” Mr. Bordron wrote. “Thank you for your patience while we work closely with Cerner to resolve the issue.”
Becker’s reached out to Oracle Health for comment.
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