Hospital Computer Problems Healed, Administrators Say
Last updated Friday, June 13, 2008 9:46 PM CDT in News
By Doug Thompson
The Morning News
SPRINGDALE - Unspecified computer problems interfered with data systems this week at Northwest Health Systems, but the problems were fixed by Thursday afternoon, spokesmen said.
Northwest Health Systems operates three major medical facilities in Northwest Arkansas: Northwest Medical Center in Springdale, Northwest Medical Center-Bentonville, and Willow Creek Women's Hospital. The problems were system-wide, spokesman Greg Russell said.
Northwest Health Systems statement said:
"This week, Northwest Health System experienced some issues with its computer systems, but they were resolved late Thursday afternoon.
"'We make every effort to anticipate and prevent the occurrence of such events and maintain contingency plans to ensure our ability to continue our operations without significant interruption,' said Dan McKay, interim CEO of Northwest Health System.
"The computer issues mainly affected the ability of our various systems to 'talk' to each other. Individual systems continued to function. There was no loss of data."
Asked the nature of the problem, whether it was a mechanical failure, a computer virus or other type of malfunction, Russell replied: "I'm sorry, but I can't say anything that's not in the release."
Any computer problem serious enough to put patient safety at risk would have been reported to the state Health and Human Services Department, department spokesmen Ed Barham said. However, the department is not at liberty to discuss those problems in public, he said, adding it would be very rare for a system crash to be a serious danger because hospitals take precautions.
"Hospitals have redundant systems for this," Barham said, referring to backup systems designed to take over if the main computer system is compromised. "They also have very robust local (computer) vendor support to handle this sort of thing."
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aijcadd wrote on Jun 14, 2008 12:24 PM: