UPDATE: On Saturday, June 20, Mass General Brigham reported that its hospitals are again “operational and open to patients.”
A global outage affecting Microsoft disrupted surgeries and other care at Mass General Brigham hospitals on Friday. Other hospitals in the area say they’re monitoring the situation, but have not canceled procedures.
“Due to the severity of this issue, all previously scheduled non-urgent surgeries, procedures, and medical visits are cancelled today,” said Noah Brown, director of global communications for Mass General Brigham, in a written statement.
Emergency rooms are open at MGB hospitals, and Brown said care is being provided in clinics to patients with urgent health concerns. Admitted patients are also continuing to receive care.
In addition to Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, MGB hospitals include Mass Eye and Ear, Faulkner Hospital, McLean Hospital, Newton-Wellesley Hospital, Salem Hospital, Wentworth-Douglass Hospital, Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, Cooley Dickinson Hospital, Nantucket Cottage Hospital, and Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital campuses in Boston and Cape Cod.
“We have dedicated every available resource to resolve this issue as quickly as possible, and we apologize for the inconvenience this has caused our patients,” Brown said. “It is our highest priority to ensure that our patients receive the safest care possible.”
Although the hospital system sent a notice to patients early Friday morning directing them not to come for non-emergencies, several still arrived at Massachusetts General Hospital hopeful to receive care.
Susan Radonsky, who is in her seventies, came to the hospital Friday morning at the direction of her doctor. She had chest pain last night and was planning to go to urgent care, but it was closed. Given the potentially fatal implications of chest pain, Radonsky used her walker to assist her in getting to the emergency room.
“I know from experience that I’m not going to get taken,” Radonsky said of emergency room inefficiency. “So now what do I do?”
As the day went on, more patients were redirected to the emergency room. Many had appointments set several months in advance that were canceled due to the outage.
Belkis Baulino, a 55-year-old woman from Lawrence, had scheduled a procedure to help alleviate her chronic pain. With that canceled, she went to the emergency room — where she’d already waited four hours by the time GBH News spoke with her.
With the computers down, triage nurses had to manually check in patients and direct them to appropriate doctors and facilities.
Mass General Brigham remained unable to access their systems on Friday afternoon. Just after 10 p.m., Mass General Brigham updated its Facebook post about the outage to say their teams would work through the night and that they expected to resume normal operations Saturday.
Other area hospitals, including Boston Medical Center, Tufts Medical Center, Beth Israel Lahey Health and UMass Medical Center in Worcester, on Friday said they were continuing to offer non-emergent procedures.
“We are aware of this global IT disruption and have been in close contact with the vendor,” said Jeremy Lechan, a spokesman for Tufts Medical Center.
