UK hospitals fall back on pen and paper after Oracle Cerner outage
- Reference: 1665574443
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/10/12/oracle_cerner_outage_uk/
- Source link:
Yesterday afternoon, Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust staff were told not to use the electronic patient record system due to a technical issue affecting Cerner.
An internal communication said that Royal Free Hospital, Chase Farm Hospital, and Barnet Hospital – all part of the trust – were reverting to "downtime" procedures, including using paper. Although some users had intermittent access to the patient record system, they were advised to continue using the downtime process.
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The Register has seen screenshots of alerts saying the incident was unplanned and caused the application to run slowly and crash. Another error message said the problem was an "invalid database configuration" and that the "configuration file could not be found."
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By 9am on October 12, the problem had been fixed, another internal communication said. The trust has been contacted for comment.
According to the Health Service Journal, a similar issue affected Barts Health NHS Trust, which also uses the Cerner Millennium system. It was unable to access patient records or write discharge summaries. One clinician said the outage was "overwhelmingly unsafe" for patients.
[4]Computer glitches harmed 'nearly 150' patients after Oracle Cerner system go-live
[5]Oracle closes $28.3b Cerner buy amid warnings of commercial challenges
[6]Oracle sees automation opportunity in healthcare following pandemic
[7]US DoJ gets more time to consider Oracle-Cerner merger
In an intriguing twist, a shortage of paper was said to be exacerbating the outage at the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust. Users questioned what would happen if the trust ran out during the downtime procedure and pointed out that the trust had been running a campaign for users to "go paperless" using an appointment booking portal.
The outage follows a summer [8]meltdown at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust , when unprecedented temperatures caused server failures and an outage of the hospitals' patient records systems, causing clinical disruption. The trust is believed to be [9]moving over to the Epic health records system , a rival to Cerner.
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In the US, errors following the go-live of a new Oracle Cerner system [11]risked the safety of 150 patients at a Washington hospital , a Senate hearing heard in July. Four days after Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center in Spokane switched over to its new Cerner software, staff became aware of an "unknown queue" problem which had the potential to harm patients.
At the hearing, Mike Sicilia, executive vice president at Oracle, said Cerner and the hospital had implemented system changes to address the issues. He promised further improvements without letting "contract wrangling get in the way."
Oracle [12]acquired Cerner for $28.3 billion in June .
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We have asked Oracle to comment but it has yet to reply. ®
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[11] https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/27/oracle_cerner_glitches_harm_patients/
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No, they checked the licenses and found significant discrepancies.
So they ordered all systems to be powered down until they can collect additional money to pay for all the extra licenses nobody asked for and even fewer need.
Medical mistakes
could kill you in the old days. Now you have to worry about crappy software killing you as well.
Someone I know was sent to A&E in one of the central London hospitals last night only to be told that a "widespread computer failure" meant their injury could not be X-rayed - presumably because either the machine couldn't be used without a valid patient e-record or there was no way to look at the digital output. No fallback available.
Downtime Procedures
Pen and paper may be used to record new medical data and billings (presumably, to be input into the computer later), but not to access patient data, which is locked-up in the for-whatever-reason malfunctioning computer system -- unless regular and frequent patient-record dumps-to-paper are being made (which they probably are not). Since previous patient medical data is usually is needed to make correct diagnoses and give correct medical care, it seems we're paying a potentially grievous price for "progress".
It's like flying in an airliner: deaths per passenger-mile are low on average , but if you're in a crash, you're probably going to be maimed and/or killed. With attacks on computers rising as they are, the averages for computer-related medical errors are increasing uncomfortably.
Re: Downtime Procedures
On the other hand, you have the famous doctors' illegible scrawl... and the outsourcing of transcribing and inputting them to the new-fangled computers
Either way you could be killed by a misprint
Perhaps they've finished slurping all our data and flogged it.
(and that'll be Barnet Hosp in Chipping Barnet)