BOULDER, Colo.—A computer outage is preventing Boulder Community Hospital from accessing patient records, making it difficult for people to schedule surgeries and get test results for the past week.
The outage affects the hospital, its Foothills campus, eight laboratories and six imaging centers.
Meditech, the computer system used by the hospital to manage patient records, went down in the middle of last week. It could take the hospital until Friday to get the system back up.
Hospital spokesman Rich Sheehan said computer experts are investigating what caused the outage, but the experts believe patient records are still protected and hospital officials don’t believe they’ve been hacked.
“We know medical care is important to people, so we understand the concerns those in the community have. We have a lot of people working on this, doing the best they can to solve this problem in a safe manner and as quickly as possible,” Sheehan said.
According to the Boulder Daily Camera ( ), the hospital is now using manual paper record-keeping systems and traditional paper charts for its patients. Hospital officials said the system allows them to continue treating patients, provide diagnostic services and collect important clinical information that will be entered later into each patient’s electronic health record.
Eroca Lowe, whose mother was in the hospital Thursday through Sunday with gallbladder pain, said the outage made it extremely difficult for doctors and nurses to do their jobs while hunting down lab results. The hospital should have a backup computer system and paper records, she said.
Dina Huber said it took her and her significant other six days to schedule an appointment for a hernia surgery because the system used for scheduling is down.
“If they can’t keep their computer system running, how can we trust them to perform surgery?” Huber asked.
For all critical and emergency tests, results are being reported to physicians by phone, which has always been the hospital’s standard procedure.
Sheehan apologized for the delays, but said they are unavoidable.
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Information from: Daily Camera,
