Australia's Queensland public hospitals experienced EHR downtime Sept. 10 due to a routine Cerner software patch, Brisbane Times reports.
The $1.2 billion EHR system, developed by Cerner, crashed for about two hours. Eight Queensland Health hospitals were affected by the EHR outage, which was the result of a Cerner-scheduled routine update. The software patch caused intermittent login issues, and hospitals staff were required to switch to paper records.
"Standard contingency plans were enacted [during the outage] and this ensured there was no impact on patient safety during this time," a Queensland Health spokesperson told the publication.
In August, Several Queensland Health hospitals experienced a different EHR outage, also caused by a Cerner software update, that made male patients' health records inaccessible. The issue lasted a few hours before access to the health records was restored, according to Brisbane Times.
Queensland Health Minister Steven Miles announced in July that the $1.2 billion EHR rollout will be delayed until 2021 due to patient safety concerns.
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