Martha’s Vineyard Hospital is recovering from what it described as a “major digital incident” caused by a global software outage, a hospital spokesperson told the Times on Saturday.
“Martha’s Vineyard Hospital is operational and open to patients,” the hospital statement read. “We have deployed every available resource since the very early hours on Friday morning. The dedication and efforts of our response team and staff have allowed our emergency department to remain open, while also ensuring we can continue safe care for the patients already admitted to our hospital.”
The worldwide software outage was caused by an update failure by CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity company that provides antivirus software to Microsoft. The company also provides software to various industries for protection against breaches and hackers.
The hospital’s response team will continue to address other parts of its systems impacted by the failure of CrowdStrike.
“Our response team is continuing to work diligently throughout the weekend to address the many additional downstream impacts across our system from the CrowdStrike failure,” the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital statement reads. “We are grateful for the patience and understanding of our patients, and we extend our heartfelt gratitude to all our staff who have worked tirelessly to respond to this extremely challenging incident.”
According to a Saturday post by CrowdStrike on its website, the issues occurred when the company released an update for Windows systems. However, the update “triggered a logic error,” and crashed the system. CrowdStrike stated the outage was not the result of a cyber attack, and it will conduct a root-cause analysis of the issue.
The software update fiasco rippled even to the Island.
On Friday, a hospital spokesperson reported cancellations in all elective and scheduled surgeries and procedures, as well as nonurgent ambulatory care, scheduled visits, and imaging procedures.
The Island hospital is part of the Mass General Brigham system, which — along with other major businesses across the country — was being impacted by the outage, according to Adam Bagni, director of communications at Mass General Brigham.
The Island hospital emergency departments remained open, and patients with urgent health concerns were provided with care.
The hospital canceled or rescheduled all other appointments and procedures on Friday, and the lab was closed to walk-in patients. Because of the outage, Martha’s Vineyard Hospital was not able to access many of its clinical systems, including patients’ health records and scheduling.
Elsewhere on the Island, Martha’s Vineyard Airport officials said to expect delays on Friday.
Airport manager Geoff Freeman said that Cape Air and JetBlue seemed unaffected. But Delta and American Airlines had to reboot their ticket counter computers and operations took longer to come together than normal.
Logan International Airport reported significant delays and cancellations on Friday. “Due to a global computer outage affecting airlines, many flights are being delayed or canceled. Please check with your airline before coming to the airport,” the airport said on social media.
Martha’s Vineyard Bank put out a statement Friday saying that their systems have largely been unaffected, and that its offices and ATMs were open. “Some systems may experience temporary delays throughout the day,” the statement said. “We apologize for any inconvenience.”
