Lubbock-based Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center and Texas Tech Physicians continue to deal with an IT outage that started in late September.
Here are six things to know, according to a Nov. 15 update from the medical school and affiliated physician group:
1. Clinical staff and providers are still unable to access electronic resources "until further notice."
2. Faxes sent since Sept. 29 may not have been received.
3. Clinics have been open, while pharmacies are now operating at full capacity with the ability to accept credit and debit cards.
4. Phone lines are experiencing "intermittent outages," while clinics are unable to respond to patient portal messages.
5. Lubbock and Permian Basin patients can view most of their medical records via their patient portals, while Amarillo patients cannot. The health system is unable to furnish paper copies.
6. While the outage affects many IT systems that Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center and Texas Tech Physicians share with Lubbock-based University Medical Center, which has been dealing with a ransomware attack, the "investigation is still ongoing" into whether the two events are related, a UMC Health System spokesperson told Becker's in November.