A major IT outage knocked out phones and internet at Sydney’s children’s hospitals for about 24 hours, causing surgeries for sick kids to be postponed.
The tech issues hit the Children’s Hospital at Westmead and the Sydney Children’s Hospital Randwick on Wednesday afternoon, forcing them to declare code yellow internal emergencies.
Staff used their mobile phones as internet hotspots and reverted to using pen and paper during the extended outage, which was announced as “resolved” by the Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network (SCHN) at 5pm on Thursday.
“During this time, emergency and outpatient departments continued to operate at both sites,” the SCHN said in a statement
“While we have been working hard to minimise disruption to patient care, several planned procedures across SCHN are being rescheduled since the outage commenced yesterday afternoon.
“We have apologised to these patients and their families for the delays, and are in communication with them. Staff are currently working to determine how telehealth appointments were affected by the outage, and will reschedule any that have been identified.”
In a post about 24 hours earlier the Children’s Hospital at Westmead announced phone issues, and asked anyone who needed information on a patient to visit in person, but said there was “no impact on patient care”.
Photos from Westmead obtained by the The Sydney Morning Herald showed a paper note taped to a chair announcing a staff forum and a code yellow on Thursday morning.
The hospitals have not revealed what caused the outage.
Header image: The Children’s Hospital at Westmead (SCHN).
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