Amid tech outages, Penn Medicine has limited access to patient records and is canceling appointments

Penn Medicine physicians had limited access to patient medical records in the wake of global tech outages, forcing the health system to cancel elective surgeries and many outpatient appointments — and even write medical notes with paper and pen Friday.

The health system was one of those hit hardest in the Philadelphia region by the issues — others including Temple Health, Jefferson Health, and the Penn-affiliated Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia were not so significantly affected. Main Line Health also reported that some of their systems were down but that doctors could still access patient records.

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Penn’s hospitals and emergency departments were “fully staffed and continuing to care for patients,” Holly Auer, a Penn spokesperson, said in an email. During the outage, Auer said, Penn cared for 2,747 people receiving inpatient treatment, including 293 people in intensive care units and 294 infants, including some in the neonatal intensive care units.

By Friday evening, Auer said, Penn’s electronic medical records were back online and staff were working to regain access to other programs affected by the outage.

Penn facilities that typically offer outpatient appointments on Saturdays — which include labs, radiology, fertility care, and primary care — will be accepting patients with previously scheduled appointments Saturday, Auer said.

Previous internal communication suggested that the health system was preparing for the possibility that disruptions would continue to affect operations into Monday. “Any patients with appointments on Monday who may be impacted by continuing outages will be contacted to reschedule,” Auer said.

Internal emails obtained by The Inquirer show the extent to which the outages hampered normal operations at Penn: By midmorning Friday, officials were urging medical practices to cancel many outpatient appointments for the rest of the day, saying access to its records system were restricted.

Health-care providers were told to decide if a patient needed to be seen. “Clinics should remain open to accommodate patients who need to be seen or show up because we are unable to reach them,” Deborah Driscoll, senior vice president for the clinical practices of the University of Pennsylvania, wrote in an email.

The email said downtown Philadelphia hospitals and outpatient facilities were impacted, but not the Penn-owned Lancaster General Hospital. Emergency rooms remained open, and patients there were experiencing long wait times, it said.

The email noted that providers should follow “downtime procedures” if they were seeing patients, and that elective surgeries and procedures were being rescheduled at hospitals. Auer said those procedures include using “backup applications to access patient information” and writing medical notes on paper.

Penn’s canceled procedures included many surgeries, endoscopies, catheterizations, and other procedures, according to another internal email, which noted the operating services could only accommodate emergencies. Doctors did continue to perform emergency surgeries, deliver babies, and transfer critically ill patients to Penn facilities, Auer said.

Patients whose appointments or procedures were canceled Friday will be reached by phone or text message with further information. They will be given new appointments in the next two weeks, Auer said.

“We understand and regret the stress and inconvenience patients experienced as a result of the CrowdStrike outage,” Auer said, referring to the cybersecurity company whose software defect caused the outages.

Outside Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Penn’s flagship medical facility, a group of phlebotomists said they had been largely unable to do their job Friday morning because of the tech outages.

“We can’t do anything,” one said, declining to share their name because they are not authorized to speak on behalf of Penn.

Even the app through which they find out which patient room they need to go to is down, they said.

Physicians at Abramson Cancer Center were also trying to see patients when possible, understanding the seriousness of rescheduling cancer treatment, but hampered by the tech outages.

Two staffers at Abramson said all of the center’s computers were down, including electronic medical charts, and that all medical notes were being written manually, on paper. (Auer said that all paper records logged Friday will be put back into patients’ electronic records once “full access is restored.”)

All they could offer many patients arriving for appointments was to write down a name and contact information — promising to call back next week to reschedule. (The staffers also declined to share their name because Penn had not authorized them to speak to The Inquirer.)

Meanwhile, some frustrated patients took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to complain about rescheduled appointments.

After suffering stress fractures in her foot six weeks ago, Margaret Thornton had been excited for her doctor at Penn Medicine to finally give her the go-ahead to remove her air cast on Friday.

But her appointment was canceled after the tech outages incapacitated systems.

Thornton was one of several Penn patients who tweeted at the health system expressing disappointment. In response to one of her tweets, Penn tweeted back that the cancellations were “not a Penn Medicine issue. This is a global IT outage that is affecting companies throughout the world.”

Thornton said she wasn’t convinced. Her mother, who works at another health system in Virginia, had lost access to some computer systems but was using pen-and-paper charts to still see patients, she said.

“It is a Penn Medicine issue because other health systems in the region, including those who use CrowdStrike, are still seeing patients today,” she tweeted, referencing the cybersecurity company whose technical issue appears to be behind the crash.

Thornton had fractured her foot from overuse, she said, “playing squash too much and walking on it.”

She was diagnosed with stress fractures and given an air cast to wear for a month and a half. Friday was supposed to be the day she was cleared to remove it — ahead of a family vacation next week.

Instead, she said, she received a voice mail Friday morning from Penn saying her appointment was canceled. “I called back to verify and someone at the call center told me their scheduling system was down and their charting system was down,” Thornton said.

“I want to wait for a doctor to see me and clear me before I move forward,” she said.

Other Philadelphia-area health systems also reported less disruptive issues due to the outages.

At Main Line Health, some of the health system’s computer systems were down, but others had already been restored late Friday morning. Main Line also still had access to its electronic health records system.

Main Line canceled elective surgeries in departments like plastic surgery and podiatry, but other appointments and nonelective surgeries, such as colorectal operations, were continuing.

“It’s an unprecedented event,” Phil Ellingsworth Jr., Main Line’s communications director, said.

After some disruptions overnight, Virtua Health’s electronic health records system were up and running by Friday afternoon, according to spokesperson Daniel Moise.

The New Jersey health system implemented its backup systems, enabling hospital and outpatient services to continue “safely and with minimal interruption,” he said. Patients experienced some delays in check-in and registration, but the outage did not impact essential care, he said.

Bucks County’s Grand View Health had an inkling that something was wrong around 2 a.m. Friday, according to health system CEO Doug Hughes.

The hospital deployed its disaster protocol, which instructs staff to use backup computers in each unit that typically remain offline. That allowed medical care to continue using its electronic medical records. By noon on Friday, Grand View’s technology systems were running at nearly 90% of their capacity, he said.

And the 194-bed hospital’s relatively small size played a role in its ability to weather the storm, Hughes said: “There are times that being smaller helps.”

Staff writer Wendy Ruderman contributed to this article.