US healthcare conglomerate Kaiser Permanente on Wednesday said its systems were suffering from intermittent outages, impacting a range of patient services, including electronic health records.
“We are currently experiencing intermittent network interruptions with some of our applications, including the system that runs our electronic health records,” Kaiser Permanente posted on its website early Wednesday evening.
“At this time, you may not be able to access some features on our site, including e-visits, billing, message center, and records,” it told patients.
Considered the largest nonprofit health plan in the nation, the Oakland, California-based non-profit serves over 12.5 million members across 40 hospitals and over 600 medical offices.
The health conglomerate also noted that some of its pharmacy, laboratory, radiology, and call center systems were also experiencing intermittent interruptions. There have also been media reports of pharmacy personnell having to use pen and paper.
“This could affect our ability to promptly process your prescriptions, lab draws, test results, or radiology procedures,” it said, apologizing to patients for the inconvenience.
One Kaiser employee took to Reddit, warning of longer wait times at one of the Northern California call centers, with another employee from Washington state also stating they were experiencing the same.
“Not sure if it’s just northern but Kaiser system is down. I know our call center can’t do much at this time. Wait times are going to be extremely long. Seems to be affecting pharmacy, radiology etc. please please be kind to the reps answering the phones we have no control over the systems,” they said.
System issues
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Kaiser said its technical teams were working to resolve the outages and that it has “backup systems and procedures in place to support both continuous patient care and secure access to medical records.”
Any individuals having a medical or mental health emergency are urged to call 911 or go to the nearest hospital.
Last April, Kaiser Permanente suffered a data breach compromising the information of more than 13.4 million patients. Kaiser blamed the cyber incident on unauthorized access to patient information through previously installed online technologies, which exposed the sensitive data when the user visited the health plan's website or mobile applications.
“The data from this breach was leaked via third-party trackers installed on its websites and mobile apps, which we confirmed was used to share patients’ personal information with third-party advertisers such as Google, Microsoft Bing, and X/Twitter,” Kaiser said at the time.
So far, there has been no mention of a malicious attack, and no group has come forward to claim responsiblity for Wednesday's outages.
Last week, the Kettering Health network in Ohio, was hit by a ransomware attack, forcing its more than 120 medical facilities and nine hospitals to cancel thousands of patient procedures for nearly a week.
Founded in 1945, the healthcare organization is comprised of the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Permanente Medical Groups, as well as Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and subsidiaries employing over 100,000 doctors and nurses and more than 240,000 medical and support staff.
Kaiser Permanente provides healthcare coverage in eight states and the nation’s capital, including California, Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Virginia, Oregon, and Washington.
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