Auckland and Northland hospitals hit by ‘major’ IT outage

Health NZ says the outage was resolved quickly without affecting patient services. Photo / 123rf

By Ellen O’Dwyer of RNZ

Auckland and Northland hospitals were hit by an IT outage on Thursday afternoon.

Health New Zealand says the outage affected the transfer of radiology images at hospitals across Auckland and Northland for two hours.

The Public Service Association said the outage was “major”, and the system affected manages all medical images including x rays, CT and MRI scans.

National Secretary Fleur Ftizsimons said it’s the second critical failure in less than a month and put patient safety at risk, after clinicians were forced to use pen and paper throughout the night in late January.

“The PACs system impacted by the outage is a critical function of our hospitals which clinicians rely on to access images so they can assess and treat patients needing urgent treatment in EDs, in operating theatres and elsewhere.

“The outage means clinicians and radiographers must communicate by text and phone to pass on vital information from scans.

“Without a doubt this will slow down treatment, compromising care,” Fitzsimons said.

Fitzsimons said the government needs to immediately review funding for health digital services and IT infrastructure.

A Health New Zealand spokesperson said the outage was resolved quickly without affecting patient services.

“During the outage standard back-up processes were used for the reviewing of radiology images.”

The spokesperson said services were fully restored within two hours and patient care was not compromised.

-RNZ