General Brigham expects “operational” after CrowdStrike incident on Saturday

Mass General Brigham locations are expected to be back up and running Saturday after cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike patched a faulty software update. The faulty software update caused technological chaos around the world on Friday, leading to flight cancellations, shutting down some financial firms and news outlets, and disrupting operations at hospitals, small businesses and government offices. “We are doing everything possible to restore the electronic systems that support patient care across our system,” Mass General Brigham said in a written statement late Friday. “Our teams will continue to work through the night to implement solutions, and we expect to be back up and running (on Saturday).” “We apologize for the inconvenience caused to the many patients who had scheduled appointments with us,” Mass General Brigham said. All planned and non-urgent surgeries and procedures at Mass General Brigham locations were suspended Friday due to the global internet outage. The outage was caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike and affected computers running Microsoft Windows. “A major worldwide software outage has impacted many of our systems at Mass General Brigham, as well as many large organizations across the country. Due to the severity of this issue, all previously scheduled non-urgent surgeries, procedures and doctor visits will be canceled (Friday),” Mass General Brigham said in a statement. Mass General Brigham remained open to care for patients with urgent health needs in the group’s clinics and emergency rooms. Doreen Richards, who lives in New York, is scheduled to undergo open-heart surgery in a few weeks and was in Boston on Friday for her pre-op appointment. “I was supposed to get everything done today to prepare (for the surgery),” Richards said. Mass General Brigham has 15 hospitals in its network, including Mass Eye and Ear, Massachusetts General Hospital, Mass General for Children, Mass General forChildren, Mass General Cancer Center, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital, McLean Hospital, Newton-Wellesley Hospital, Salem Hospital, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital (Cape Cod), Westworth-Douglas Hospital, Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, Cooley Dickinson Hospital and Nantucket Cottage Hospital. An employee at Mass General Brigham confirmed that surgeries were canceled, but staff went to work. A patient who left Massachusetts General Hospital said he did not have access to lab results. Families picking up patients from Tufts Medical Center on Friday said turnaround times have been longer after previous surgeries this week due to a manual process, handwritten prescriptions and limited technology. “We have standard procedures in place in the event that our clinical systems are electronic, the medical record goes down, and we have protocols that we use, and they include pen and paper and prescription pads. And today we had to shake those off and use them for some of the types of care,” said Terry Hudson-Jinks, Tufts’ chief nursing officer.