Alberta Health Forced to Cancel Non-Urgent Surgeries, Reduce Lab Services After Network Outage

Health Minister Jason Copping addresses the children’s medication shortage in Edmonton, on Dec. 6, 2022. Jason Franson/The Canadian Press

EDMONTON—A network outage that affected Alberta Health Services (AHS) for much of the day on Jan. 23 has been resolved and services are returning to normal, according to a 2 p.m. local time update on a temporary website the government health agency created to provide ongoing information.

The outage resulted in the postponement of some non-urgent, elective surgeries as a precaution to ensure emergency and urgent surgeries could continue, said AHS. Those patients impacted are being contacted to have their appointments rebooked.

While 911 services were not affected, AHS posted on Twitter at approximately 12:30 p.m. that backup procedures for EMS were being used during the outage.

AHS said it was restoring services with priority given to critical patient care such as emergency rooms, and Health Link 811 telephone service was again available with normal wait times.

The website statement also said AHS was attempting to determine the root cause of the network outage, and that clinical systems would still take a few hours to be fully restored.

Physicians and medical staff were told that IT systems and clinical systems including Connect Care and NetCare were down, and there were no IT services or support available during the outage.

AHS said community lab services were being reduced at some sites, with critical results for in-hospital patients, AHS outpatients, and community lab patients receiving results by phone and fax as necessary.

AHS vice-president and medical director for clinical operations Dr. Sid Viner told CBC that computer systems in hospitals were largely down, and nursing staff would be using paper charts, whiteboards, and phone calls to communicate during the electronic network outage.

According to Health Minister Jason Copping, the outage was believed to be caused by an internal issue.

The AHS Twitter account first announced the province-wide network outage around 9:30 a.m. local time, and said 811 Health Link was down entirely and unable to take calls.

At roughly 10:30 a.m., AHS posted that it was working to restore clinical IT services, as well as full capacity for Health Link. Albertans were told to call 911 in an emergency, and AHS said sites were using downtime procedures as required.

AHS did not immediately respond to a request for further updates as to the estimated time to have services fully restored.