Allegheny Health System Computer Crash (Again) and Paper Backups

I reported on a health IT crash in my May 2011 post "<a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/05/twelve-hour-health-it-glitch-at.html" target="_blank">Twelve Hour Health IT Glitch at Allegheny General Hospital - But Patients Unaffected, Of Course...</a>"<br /><br />Now, there's this at the <a href="http://www.wpahs.org/locations" target="_blank">same healthcare system</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><b><a href="http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/news/health/computer-system-at-west-penn-allegheny-crashes-655866" target="_blank">Computer system at West Penn Allegheny restored after crash</a> </b><br /><b>Liz Navratil<br />Pittsburgh Post-Gazette<br />October 2, 2012 </b><br /><br />The computer system at West Penn Allegheny Health System crashed about noon today, temporarily leaving doctors and nurses to work off of paper records instead.<br /><br />Kelly Sorice, vice president of public relations for the health system, said all systems have since been restored. She said the servers crashed about noon today when the system experienced a power surge.<br /><br /><b>Doctors in the health system keep paper copies of almost all of their records</b> so they can reference them during power outages or scheduled maintenance times, Ms. Sorice said.</blockquote><br />Some systems were up eight hours later and others were expected to come online overnight, according to a report at <a href="http://histalk2.com/2012/10/02/news-10312/" target="_blank">HisTalk</a>.<br /><br />Assuming the statement about "doctors keep paper copies of almost all their records" was not spin control regarding skeletal paper records, a question arises.<br /><br />Why, exactly, spend hundreds of millions of dollars on computing if paper records are kept, and are perfectly sufficient to accomplish the following, the usual refrain in health IT crash scenarios?<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Ms. Sorice said she did not know of any procedures that had been rescheduled and added that, <b>"Patient care has not been compromised."</b> </blockquote><br />As a physician/ham radio enthusiast who did an elective in Biomedical Engineering in medical school, I also want to know:<br /><br />1)  What caused the “power surge?”<br />2)  Why were the systems not protected against a “power surge?”<br />3)  Exactly how did the “power surge” affect the IT?<br /><br />Note: I've created a new, searchable indexing term for HIT outage stories with the usual refrain along the lines that <b>"patient care has not been compromised."  </b><br /><br />See <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/Patient%20care%20has%20not%20been%20compromised" target="_blank">this query link</a> using the new indexing term.<br /><br />-- SS<br /><br /><b>Addendum Oct. 3:</b><br /><br />Australian EHR reseacher and professor <a href="http://rp-www.cs.usyd.edu.au/~jonpat/" target="_blank">Dr. Jon Patrick</a> opines:<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Even if [the paper records are] skeletal they suggest an endemic lack of confidence. I think the hospital spokesperson hasn't seen the implication of their statement.</blockquote><br />-- SS

Allegheny Health System Computer Crash (Again) and Paper Backups

I reported on a health IT crash in my May 2011 post " Twelve Hour Health IT Glitch at Allegheny General Hospital - But Patients Unaffec...

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