[Ed. note: This piece has been updated to include comments from the VA.]
Dozens of federal internet sites skilled an digital health records outage this past week, leading to nearly three hours in which clinicians may well perchance perchance furthermore not change clinical records.
In accordance with Nextgov’s Aaron Boyd, Oracle databases powering Cerner’s programs at Department of Protection, Breeze Guard and Veterans Affairs internet sites went offline on Wednesday evening round 5 p.m. ET.
“Cerner stays steadfast in its toughen of our federal customers’ efforts to present timely, excessive-quality care via a single, frequent digital health anecdote,” acknowledged Pat Sargent, frequent supervisor of Cerner Government Services and products, in a commentary to Healthcare IT News.
“We continue to work hand-in-hand with our federal partners to condo any and all issues and are committed to getting this perfect for provider participants, veterans and their families,” Sargent added. “Any downtime, alternatively quick, is unacceptable, and we work day to day to make certain that we’re delivering the finest probably alternate suggestions.”
“Federal customers of the original Cerner digital health anecdote diagram (VA, Department of Protection and U.S. Breeze Guard) skilled a tool outage from 4: 09 p.m. to 6: 15 p.m. CT on April 6, 2022,” acknowledged VA representatives to Healthcare IT News after publication. “The diagram used to be not accessible to quit customers for the length of this time and internet sites entered downtime procedures, consist of going to paper charting until the diagram used to be grew to change into aid on.
“The incident began with a failure of surely one of three Oracle database cases. The root arena off just isn’t certain at the present, but reveal Oracle objects are being investigated,” the representatives added. “All database, application and Citrix nodes have been restarted, restoring provider. There used to be no records loss or records corruption.
“Users logged aid on and have been in a position to make use of the diagram in overall. A rotund incident document will probably be produced after traditional most predominant incident processes,” they persisted.
Requests for observation to DOD weren’t returned by press time.
WHY IT MATTERS
As reported by Boyd, the outage affected the EHR programs at 66 DOD providers, 109 Breeze Guard providers and three on the VA.
Overall, more than 95,000 clinician customers felt the outcomes, even even though officers urged Boyd there used to be no proof of patient hurt.
While the most predominant EHR used to be down, clinicians may well perchance perchance furthermore review patient records via a “learn-handiest” diagram, Boyd reported, but may well perchance perchance furthermore not change any records.
VA EHRM Integration Office Program Executive Director Terry Adirim urged participants of the press Thursday that crew persisted with most clinical operations for the length of the outage, relying on pen and paper to anecdote patient records after which updating the EHR later.
Federal News Community‘s Jory Heckman renowned that Adirim acknowledged an investigation is ongoing concerning the realm off, but pointed to an Oracle server worm.
The programs have been aid online by 8 p.m. ET Wednesday.
THE LARGER TREND
The hiccup followed a widely publicized outage on the starting of March, in which VA crew at Spokane, Washington, and Columbus, Ohio, internet sites relied on downtime procedures for nearly 24 hours.
More than 200 historical records may well perchance perchance furthermore have been tormented by the matter, spokespeople urged Healthcare IT News.
A few weeks later, U.S. Senator Patty Murray, D-Wash., issued a commentary asking VA to remain its deliberate March 26 rollout of the Cerner EHR in Walla Walla.
“Factual this month, I made clear to VA that if they weren’t in a position to continue the rollout of the Cerner EHR, they wished to remain the educate in its tracks. It is time to remain the educate,” she acknowledged in a commentary.
That commence went forward as deliberate, alternatively.
“We’re livid for this original budge and have labored disturbing for some time to be titillating for this momentous match,” acknowledged VA officers in a weblog put up.
Meanwhile, the Breeze Guard and DOD have persisted to growth with their maintain EHR modernization projects.
ON THE RECORD
“We’re in shut contact with Cerner, and we’re exercising all of our authority to make certain that that that we are in a position to wretchedness ourselves for fulfillment and remark that when most of this stuff happen, we gather to the foundation arena off,” acknowledged Deputy VA Secretary Donald Remy in a press name Thursday, as Heckman reported.
“We conduct a root arena off diagnosis, we determine how the reveal arose, and we make certain that that that we don’t stare the identical thing happen in the waste.”
Kat Jercich is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Twitter: @kjercich
Email: [email protected]
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.
