What To Do (And What Not To Do) When Your $1B System-Wide EHR Fails

'There really wasn’t any support from management on what was going on.'

The 24-hospital Sutter Health system in Northern California was the talk of the town late August after a software glitch rendered its $1 billion Epic electronic health record system inaccessible to nurses and clinical staff throughout all Sutter locations. 

On Aug. 26 at approximately 8 a.m., nurses, physicians and hospital staff had no access to patient information, including patient medications and all vital patient history data, according to reports from the California Nurses Association, part of National Nurses United, the largest nurses' union in the U.S. 

"Many of the families became concerned because they noticed the patients were not getting their medications throughout the day,” explained Mike Hill, RN at Sutter’s Alta Bates Summit Medical Center and CNA representative for the hospital. "Meds were not given for the entire day for many of the patients."