CALGARY — Alberta Health Services says a network outage at hospitals and other clinical settings earlier this week was caused by a routine maintenance change that was made to the system.
The province's health-care delivery agency said Monday that the outage affected some of its services that day.
It said at the time that emergency medical dispatch was functioning with backup procedures and calls to 911 were not affected, but some non-urgent surgeries were postponed.
AHS says it's now in the process of rebooking those surgeries and adds that all clinical systems have been restored to their full capacity.
It says it is working with the vendor who did the maintenance to find out what happened.
The agency says it has asked a third party with IT experience to review the situation and notes an internal review is underway to identify any issues or gaps in response to the outage.
"We are extremely grateful for the work of AHS staff and physicians who did an outstanding job in difficult circumstances to provide patient care," the statement said Wednesday.
A senior health official said Monday that doctors and staff at hospitals across Alberta had to use paper charts, whiteboards and phone calls to communicate with each other during the network outage.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 25, 2023.
The Canadian Press
