O'FALLON, Ill. — Nurses and doctors are experiencing day three of providing care without internet, phones or numerous online applications after a systemwide outage at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in the Metro East on Wednesday.
The hospital's clinical and administrative applications are down following the outage, causing issues with the scheduling of some services, staff posted on the hospital's Facebook page on Tuesday. The hospital's website also appears to be down and calls are not going through the hospital's landline phone number.
Patients with already-booked appointments will reportedly be seen by the hospital as planned. Patients coming to the hospital for a lab test must have a printed order form, otherwise the hospital will not be able to see them since it cannot access the order digitally.
The hospital hasn't said what the cause of the outage was. It has also not given an estimate on when the outage will be resolved.
"We are still assessing the situation," the hospital said in a statement on Wednesday. "Our IT team is working to restore our systems as quickly as possible. It is unclear at this time when systems will be fully restored."
Healthcare providers are running the hospital's "downtime policies and procedures" as the outage continues.
"We are well trained to take care of our patients’ needs until the issue is resolved," the post said. "Our downtime practices enable us to provide the same level of quality, safe and effective care that our Franciscan health ministry has been committed to over its long history."
Some patients disagreed. Commenters under the post painted a much more chaotic picture of hospital procedures amid the outage, including:
- "I was there this morning and it is a mess."
- "I actually find this pretty unacceptable. Ask the patients in the hospital if they feel your downtime practices are as good and efficient. I have a family member in the hospital and it's not!!"
- "What a nightmare not knowing what is going on."
This is a developing story. 5 On Your Side will update the story as new information is released.
Top St. Louis headlines
Get the latest news and details throughout the St. Louis area from 5 On Your Side broadcasts here.