July 19, 2024 – In the wee hours of Friday morning, Sue Bennett missed a call from Emory Health in Atlanta and woke up to a voicemail stating that her scheduled biopsy needed to be pushed back for 3 weeks. The cause? A massive IT failure that threatened hospital systems nationwide.
“They were very efficient and got back to me shortly after I called back,” Bennett said. “Within hours, I was able to reschedule.”
Bennett is among those affected by the global IT outage that shocked major hospital systems, as well as banks, air travel, and more.
A software bug from cybersecurity company CrowdStrike caused a shutdown in Microsoft Windows services; as a result, hospitals have been unable to access critical medical information for day-to-day operations and have had to cancel nonemergency medical procedures and scheduled appointments.
There is no word on when systems might return to normal. The problem only applies to Microsoft services. Mac and Linux systems continue to operate normally.
Many hospital systems have been hit by the bug, which came from what was supposed to be a routine software update. Among them are Mount Sinai and Northwell Health in New York; Provincial Health Services Authority in Vancouver, British Columbia; and England’s National Health Service (NHS), along with many more.
“UofL Health is working through issues caused by the national CrowdStrike IT defect. All patient care continues, including access to emergency care, trauma, and surgeries,” said a spokesperson from the University of Louisville Hospital in Kentucky. “Appointments with all UofL Physicians locations, medical centers, and hospital-based clinics remain on schedule.”
The NHS said in a statement that, despite the technical chaos, they have “long standing measures in place to manage the disruption, including using paper patient records and handwritten prescriptions, and the usual phone systems to contact your [general practitioner].”
But not all systems have been able to keep their appointments on schedule.
According to CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz, a software update “traditionally goes out in a phased approach … it initially went out and we started to see some issues and then pulled it back,” he said in an interview with CNBC.
On X, formerly known as Twitter, Kurtz said, “We understand the gravity of the situation and are deeply sorry for the inconvenience and disruption. We are working with all impacted customers to ensure that systems are back up and they can deliver the services their customers are counting on.”
Johns Hopkins said the outage is having “minimal impact” on normal IT operations, the Baltimore-based medical center shared in a statement to WebMD. “Johns Hopkins Medicine (JHM) facilities are open and providing patient care … JHM has emergency preparedness protocols, including downtime procedures, in place that ensure the health system is able to maintain continuity in our operations and ability to continue to provide safe, high-quality care in the event of an outage, like this.”