O'FALLON, Ill. — Brian Wilkerson can't get the prescriptions he needs to survive refilled. Calls to the hospital in charge of getting him his medications have gone unanswered.
"I just tried to call this past week and my phone rang, it rang four or five times, and then it just hung up," he told 5 On Your Side on Sunday.
Wilkerson's frustrations come after HSHS St. Elizabeth's Hospital in O'Fallon announced it has closed its Convenient Care amid a now week-long systemwide outage.
St. Elizabeth's posted to Facebook Saturday to announce the closure of the service at the hospital, citing the outage.
"St. Elizabeth's Emergency Department is always open for your emergency needs," the post said, adding that anyone experiencing chest pains or major trauma shouldn't delay care and should immediately call 911.
Some patients might not find it hard to jump in the car and drive to the hospital. But, for Wilkerson, it's not that easy. He depends on a wheelchair for mobility and requires a health aid to drive him, not to mention the distance he has to travel in the first place.
"Driving 35 miles to the doctors and 35 miles to the pharmacy and then 15 miles back home. So, yeah, it's not just me. There are several seniors in this area that are stuck fighting the same thing with health care," Wilkerson said.
He's even more concerned about the possibility his personal and medical information was leaked.
"They haven't told us anything and it'd be nice if they did. It would relieve some stress and worry," Wilkerson said.
The outage was reported on Aug. 27, and affects the ability of St. Elizabeth's to access almost all online operating systems, the hospital said in a statement Wednesday. The outage affected the hospital's phone system as well.
On Sunday, one week after the outage began, an HSHS spokesperson told 5 On Your Side federal agencies were now involved in the investigation into the outage.
The spokesperson did not give an update on when the system would be restored.
The hospital has not listed a cause for the outage and declined to state whether patients' records were leaked.
Other local hospitals affected by the HSHS outage include:
- HSHS St. Joseph's Breese, in Breese, Illinois
- HSHS St. Joseph's Highland, in Highland, Illinois.
- HSHS Holy Family Hospital, in Greenville, Illinois.
This is a developing story. 5 On Your Side will update the story as information is confirmed.
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