Mass General Brigham – one of the biggest healthcare systems in America – has axed all non-urgent visits, procedures and surgeries amid a global IT failure.
Hospitals were thrown into chaos overnight when the outage took out Windows systems around the world, knocking computers and medical devices offline and forcing medical staff to revert to pen and paper.
Mass General Brigham in Boston – which sees 2.5million patients a year in its 15 hospitals and clinics – said it would only provide care to patients who have urgent health problems.
Mass General Brigham – one of the biggest healthcare systems in America – has axed all non-urgent visits, procedures and surgeries amid a global IT failure (stock)
‘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,’ the provider said.
‘It is our highest priority to ensure that our patients receive the safest care possible.’
A spokesperson added: ‘We continue to care for all patients currently receiving care in our hospitals.’
Tufts Medical Center and South Shore Health, also in Boston, were also experiencing issues linked to the global tech outage.
But the issue extends well beyond Massachusetts. Hundreds of hospitals are thought to be impacted by the issue.
Also thrown into chaos were 911 and non-emergency call centers which are not working correctly across multiple states.
While the full impact of the bug is not known yet, hundreds of thousands of computers around the world suddenly shut down in the middle of the night, impacting businesses, transport links and TV broadcasts globally.
A software glitch with a piece of cyber security technology, called CrowdStrike, appears to be to blame. The tool is used to protect against hacking threats.
The issue seemed to impact PCs running on Microsoft’s Windows 10.
This is a developing story
