Quick action restores thousands of SH computers
28 Jul 2024Patient care prioritized as staff apply fixes
By: James Parr, executive vice president of operations and chief financial officer
As you may know, Salem Health’s Incident Command team convened early Friday to work with Information Services staff throughout the weekend to counteract the global IT CrowdStrike disruption.
While we had to cancel procedures before 10 a.m. Friday, July 19, downtime procedures began, communication ramped up to all staff and by noon, we experienced minimal disruptions to patient care.
“Despite the challenges, our hospitals and clinics remained open and patients continued to receive first-class care,” said Incident Commander James Parr. “To those who received care, this process appeared almost seamless.”
By 4 p.m. Saturday, 4,900 computers were restored — and as of 4 p.m. Sunday, July 21, we had reduced the number of broken computers to 971 out of 7,500. As a result, we were ready for normal business operations, with a plan to quickly restore ALL computers with teams dispersing Monday throughout our campuses and clinics.
We would not be where we are today without the knowledge and guidance of our outstanding IS staff, along with countless volunteers across the organization that stepped up over the weekend to lend a hand.
A special thank you to the hundreds of volunteers who spent most of the weekend scouring the organization for broken computers and applying fixes. Volunteers came in from a diverse spectrum of departments, such as:
- EVS
- Nutrition Services
- Care Management
- Clinical Engineering
- Facilities
- Finance
- CVCU
- Cancer Services
- Service Excellence
- Supply Chain
- CHEC
- Lab
- Corporate Integrity
- Catering
- ICU
“Everyone is amazing,” said Information Services infrastructure Manager Lauren Becktold. “Their dedication, patience and willingness to learn so they can help during a crisis is what makes Salem Health the incredible place it is.”
IS Infrastructure team members Doug Bruce, Patrick Wharton and Addy Null reboot some of the more than 7,000 systems affected by the global IT CrowdStrike disruption.