A Kaiser Permanente systems outage has pharmacies relying on pen and paper

Healthcare company Kaiser Permanente dealt with a system outage on Wednesday that forced its hospitals and pharmacies to fill out prescriptions with pen and paper and slowed down services at other parts of the company. But in a statement, Kaiser Permanente spokesperson Kathleen Campini Chambers says the issue was fixed Wednesday evening: > On May 28, Kaiser Permanente experienced network interruptions to some of our applications that prevented access to some features on our website, including e-visits, billing, message center, and records. Some members also experienced delays to lab and pharmacy services at some of our medical offices. > We are pleased to report that, as of 6:00 p.m. PT on May 28, our technical teams have resolved the issue, and all our technology applications are back online and fully functional. We are continuing to monitor our systems to ensure ongoing system stability. > We deeply apologize for the disruptions this caused. In an earlier statement, Campini Chambers said that the company was experiencing network interruptions “at one of our data centers.” One Verge staffer saw the problems firsthand on Wednesday while trying to get a prescription filled at a Kaiser hospital pharmacy. They said all the pharmacy’s systems were down, including payment terminals, and that the pharmacists had to fill out a point-of-sale form to fill the prescription. Staffers at the pharmacy warned about long wait times, saying it could take an hour to fill a simple prescription. A thread on Reddit also included reports of issues from places like Southern California and Maryland. Update, May 29th: Kaiser Permanente says the issue was fixed.