Dive Brief:
- On March 2, the California Nurses Association reported that Antelope Valley Hospital in Lancaster, CA shut down following an EHR outage.
- In a statement provided to Healthcare Dive, hospital representatives said they did experience an outage, but they were able to quickly identify the problem and restore the system.
- The hospital says that patient safety was not compromised in any way during the outage.
Dive Insight:
The hospital told Becker's Hospital Review that it activated its "downtime procedures" during the outage while working to restore the system, which is contrary to the claim by the CNA that the hospital did not have backup procedures in place. According to the hospital, the ED personnel continued to treat patients. Medication orders were completed by hand and filled by the pharmacy. "Our team of professionals worked tirelessly throughout the weekend to process lab orders and results, review radiology exams, carry out treatment plans and deliver overall patient care as promptly as possible," Antelope Valley Hospital CEO Dennis Knox said.