Network Outage: Recovery from Downtime Procedures
Update (17:00): All AHS clinical information systems, including Connect Care, will be accessible as of 18:00 (January 23, 2023) and can be used for patient care.
Please follow standard Downtime and Recovery Procedures and be attentive to data update needs as downtime information is captured. Prescribers should be sure to check the following:
- Downtime documents (scanned to media manager by designated staff), and medication administration documentation (again by designated staff).
- Problem list updates for new, changed or resolved items.
- Entering or updating admission diagnoses (principal problem) and discharge or visit diagnoses for transitions occurring during downtime.
- Reviewing best possible medication histories and associated medication reconciliation for admissions or discharges occurring during downtime.
- Check downtime orders captured and entered by nursing and pharmacy team members and enter key missing orders (e.g., goals of care designation, mental health status orders).
- Attend to In Basket messages with links to missing chart elements and use ".DOWNTIME" SmartPhrase (non-Emergency prescribers) or ".DTNOTE" (for emergency prescribers) to complete the chart element and indicate that content is available elsewhere in the chart.
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UPDATE (14:00): The technical issue causing the provincial network outage has been resolved and teams are working quickly to restore all clinical systems.
This work will take a few hours. Services are carefully being restored with priority being given to critical patient care areas, such as emergency departments. Please continue to use downtime procedures for now.
Further updates will be provided with instructions on when and how to log back into clinical systems and update information as needed.
We are reviewing the cause of the technical issue to learn how we can prevent this from happening in the future.
Thank you again for your support and understanding.
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UPDATE (12:30): The network problem has been solved and clinical systems will return to full functionality shortly. However, users are not able to log on to Connect Care until a careful and orderly process for restarting all the systems that Connect Care depends upon. Until then, the "SRO" read-only version of Connect Care is available now (same Connect Care logon credentials) and can provide patient information up till 07:30.
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Attention all Connect Care users!
AHS is experiencing a provincial network outage, which is impacting many IT and clinical systems, including Connect Care.
All impacted systems should move to downtime procedures. The IT Solution Centre and Service Desk cannot be reached at this time. IT teams are working to identify a resolution as quickly as possible.
Due to the provincial scale of the network outage, some services are immediately affected:
- As a precaution, elective surgeries are being postponed at some sites and all impacted patients will be contacted directly. Procedures are being rescheduled as soon as possible. Emergency and urgent surgeries are continuing across the province.
- Community lab services are impacted and will be reduced at some sites.
- Please do not call the labs for results as they have no further information at this point: critical results for inpatients, AHS outpatients and community lab patients are being communicated by telephone and fax.
- EMS dispatch is functioning with back-up procedures and calls to 911 are not affected. In an emergency, 911 should continue to be used.
- Health Link (811) continues to be available, with some limits to capacity. Wait times will be longer than usual.
- MyHealth Alberta and MyAHS Connect are not currently available.
- Netcare is affected in many locations.
For Connect Care users, please refer to : Connect Care Manual - Downtime Support (connect-care.ca)
If inpatient prescribers need information about AHS inpatients, go to the nursing station where the majority of your patients are located and ask for assistance from a team member able to log into the back up computers (BCA) to see patient information (current as of start of downtime 07:30).