Overview
- Computer systems at over a dozen Mass General Brigham hospitals went offline around midday and clinicians immediately reverted to paper records and manual processes to keep patients safe.
- The outage forced the postponement of some elective outpatient procedures and delayed at least one patient transfer because required electronic documents could not be completed.
- MGB issued a public statement denying the outage was a cyberattack and said patient care continued despite the disruption.
- Technical teams began restoring systems Thursday night and reported sites were returning to normal operations, but the organization has not yet identified the root cause.
- Because MGB relies heavily on networked electronic records, the incident highlights how IT failures can ripple into scheduling, transfers and routine lab work and it could prompt reviews of backup systems and recovery plans.