Computer outage at SW Ontario hospitals

WINDSOR, Ont. – A critical technology malfunction hit the five hospitals in the Erie St. Clair Region last Saturday, affecting multiple systems.

TransForm Shared Service Organization said it has been working around the clock with the vendor who provided the affected platform and said approximately 80 percent of affected systems have been recovered and returned to service as of Sunday morning.

Computer systems at Windsor Regional Hospital, Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare, Erie Shores HealthCare, Chatham-Kent Health Alliance and Bluewater Health in Sarnia were impacted.

TransForm said the incident was not the result of a cyber attack.

The company said the systems performed as designed by immediately detecting the issue and notifying TransForm.

The company said the hospitals have continued to provide care to patients using their contingency and downtime procedures.

Steve Erwin, director of public affairs and communications with the Windsor Regional Hospital issued a statement on the matter:

“The system worked as it should. TransForm was alerted to the malfunction immediately. Consequently, hospitals move into their contingency plans, which can include paper charting and other paperwork staff are trained to do in the event that computer systems are offline even for a brief period.

There were no cancellations of diagnostic imaging appointments, nor were any patients requiring to be re-routed to other centres. Patients continued to receive care as they always would, including emergency care and diagnostic imaging as required. The systems issue just meant processing patient information took more time than normal while the network was down.

Unlike criminal cyber security incident that breached regional hospital systems in the fall of 2023 and last several weeks, this incident, which was not a cyber security issue, was largely resolved within 48-72 hours.

We are proud of the work of the TransForm IT teams, as well as our hospital staff to respond to the challenge. This was exceptional work across the system.”