Five Queensland (Australia) Health facilities are using paper medical records after an attempt to upgrade cybersecurity caused issues with the health system's EMR, according to The Courier-Mail.
Here are five things to know.
1. Queensland Health, a department of the Government of Queensland in Australia, operates Queensland's public health system.
2.To protect Queensland Health facilities from the worldwide ransomware attack that occurred earlier this month, state officials installed security patches from Microsoft, Cerner and Citrix.
"[W]hile those patches have protected the integrity of our systems and data, it appears these protections may be making logging on and off the integrated electronic medical record system difficult for some users," Health Minister Cameron Dick told The Courier-Mail.
3. This issue affected five public hospitals in Queensland. At Woolloongabba-based Princess Alexandra Hospital, about 500 clinicians were unable to log in to the EMR, Dr. Richard Ashby, CEO of support agency eHealth Queensland, told The Courier-Mail.
4. Mr. Dick said 22 outpatient appointments had been delayed as of May 24, however, no surgeries were affected, according to The Courier-Mail.
5. eHealth Queensland is working with Cerner, the health system's EMR vendor, to address the IT issues. Mr. Dick told the Parliament of Australia the issue may not be resolved for at least a week.