The Roper St. Francis hospital system, based in Charleston, S.C., has been dealing with a network outage since July 14 stemming from a hardware failure, a hospital spokesperson told The Post and Courier.
The hospital doesn't have a timeline for when it expects to bring each system back online. The health system's three hospitals, express care offices and its Physician Partners offices have remained open, but some employees in corporate service teams have been asked not to come to work.
Some patients told The Post and Courier when they tried to call to schedule appointments, none of the Physician Partners' phone systems were working. The network outage hasn't caused any breach of patient information, but has affected the system's lab results communications system for outpatient lab testing.
Access to the EHR has been stifled due to the outage, leading clinicians to revert to paper charting. Employees' timesheets and communications were also affected by the outage.
A Charleston County spokesperson told The Post and Courier that no communication issues between Roper and the county's emergency medical service have been reported.