Setback For Sutter After $1B EHR Crashes

'No access to medication orders, patient allergies and other information puts patients at serious risk'

The nearly $1 billion electronic health record system at Sutter Health in Northern California crashed early this week, leaving nurses and clinical staff unable to access any patient information for a full day.

On Aug. 26 at approximately 8 a.m., the Epic EHR system crashed, at which time nurses, physicians and hospital staff had no access to patient information, including what medications patients were taking or required to take and all vital patient history data, according to reports from the California Nurses Association, part of National Nurses United, the largest nurses union in the U.S. 
 
Days earlier, the EHR system was also down for eight hours due to a planned upgrade; nurses could still read medication orders and patient histories but had to record new data on paper to then be re-entered into the system later.