According to information provided to hospital staff and obtained by CBC News, a “hardware problem” was discovered around 5 a.m. Friday, resulting in a network failure that affected several software systems and forced the hospital into a critical infrastructure failure with gray code.
The situation remained unexplained publicly, by official TOH sources, for nearly 12 hours.
An internal memo obtained by CBC News said the outage affected software systems that handle patient communications and records.
Hospital staff resorted to using paper records and, later in the day, calling patients with results when some systems were back online.
Several patients reported having their medical appointments canceled because of the system failure, while others who spoke to CBC News outside General’s campus said their experience went smoothly despite the technology issues.
But when it came to official communication about the critical network failure that affected all three campuses throughout the day: almost silence.
Just before 5 p.m., hospital staff sent the following update about the outage to CBC News:
“All TOH systems are now up and running and today’s network issue has been resolved. The Ottawa Hospital is fully operational. Thank you and have a great weekend!”
Renu Bakshi is a crisis manager and media trainer based in Vancouver. (Submitted by Renu Bakshi)
In the eyes of Renu Bakshi, a Vancouver-based crisis manager and media trainer, it’s not the way to handle difficult situations.
“If there’s one thing we’ve learned through the pandemic, it’s that communication is critical,” he said. “Early and frequent communication in a crisis is critical.”
“The reason is that keeping people in the dark increases fear and anxiety.”
Bakshi said the hospital should have provided more frequent updates, giving people the best information as the situation developed.
He said it’s especially important given The Ottawa Hospital’s role.
“One question for me when I was reading their statements — the few public statements they made — was trying to understand how they were prioritizing life-saving procedures,” he said, “because that’s the biggest concern anyone, any member of the community, would have.” .
Holidays like this ‘very rare’
Rachel Muir, president of the Ottawa Hospital’s bargaining unit for the Ontario Nurses Association, called a complete shutdown like this “very rare.” While glitches may occur from time to time, he can’t remember another outage of this scale. “They’re so good at doing that,” he said. “They’re very good at catching it and fixing it before it becomes a big deal.” “Everybody gets caught out once in a while… You can’t avoid that.” Still, Bakshi hopes the hospital uses Friday as a learning opportunity. Staff should review whether they are communicating across all the channels available to them, he said, and consider how they want crises to be communicated in order to reach the widest possible audience. “Honestly, I think they owe the community an apology for their incredible communication,” he said. “That last bit at the end. ‘Hey, have a great night, really threw me off.’
