Valley hospitals continue work through tech outage

By Tom Blodgett
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Valley hospitals remained open Friday in the wake of the faulty CrowdStrike update that affected Microsoft platforms, but some of the health-care networks that operate them encountered system troubles.

Perhaps most affected was Banner Health, the state's largest health-care network, which indicated that its hospitals are open for in-patient care and medical emergencies.

But most all other Banner locations are currently closed, according to the company, and the website had a notice that they are working to reopen those sites and reschedule appointments.

Valleywise Health, operated by the Maricopa County Special Health Care District, continued to provide patient care through the outage with emergency departments and the Level I Trauma Center remaining open, spokesperson Michael Murphy said by email. Scheduled surgeries also continued.

"In some cases, our health care professionals had to resort to paper patient charting, but our IT teams are carefully bringing back all our systems," he said. "We want to assure the community Valleywise Health is open and continuing to provide high quality care to every patient, every time."

Dignity Health's hospitals remain open and "staff continues to provide safe, high-quality care to our patients," spokesperson Abby Kay said by email.

But she said some Dignity Health facilities have been affected by the global IT outage affecting computer systems.  

Meanwhile, HonorHealth had no system effect, spokesperson Bill Baer said.

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Tom Blodgett
Senior News Editor | Gilbert

tblodgett@iniusa.org

Meet Tom
Tom Blodgett joined Independent Newsmedia, Inc., USA, in 2022, when the company acquired Community Impact Newspaper's Phoenix-area properties. Raised in Arizona, he has spent more than 35 years in journalism in the state.

Community: He has served as an instructional professional in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication since 2005, and is editorial adviser to The State Press, the university's independent student media outlet. He also is director of operations for an 18U girls fastpitch softball team from Gilbert.

Education: Arizona State University with a BS in Journalism. 

Random Fact: He lived in Belgium during his freshman year of high school.  

Hobbies: Tweeting enthusiastically about ASU softball (season-ticket holder) and grumpily about other local sports (pessimistic fan).