The outage disrupted computer systems at more than 12 Mass General Brigham hospitals Thursday, prompting staff to use pen-and-paper charting while care teams worked to keep patients moving through the system. MGB said patient care continued except for some elective outpatient procedures; a patient's transfer to a recovery center was delayed.
According to WHDH, Mass General Brigham hospitals and care teams have activated established downtime procedures, which include switching to paper forms, using alternate communication methods, and following set processes for updating electronic records once systems come back online. The station reports that MGB says the outage is not the result of a cyberattack. The health system said the outage affected computer systems across the organization. As Massachusetts' largest private employer, the nonprofit system treats more than 2 million unique patients a year and oversees a research budget topping $2.7 billion, according to Mass General Brigham, underscoring how many patients and staff are touched when its core network goes down.
A System Built on Thousands of Connected Apps
The disruption highlights the risks that technology outages can pose to scheduling, charting, and communication tools across facilities. The challenges of complex systems and the need for resilience are discussed by Health Affairs.
This is not uncharted territory for Mass General Brigham. The health system also experienced a network outage in 2024. That event exposed a workforce gap: an MGB executive said in August that an estimated half of the system's clinical staff had never documented patient care on paper before the 2024 outage, which prompted updated downtime retraining across facilities, according to the same Healthcare Brew account cited above.
Part of a Wider Pattern Across Healthcare IT
MGB's troubles this week also highlight the risks of interconnected hospital IT systems. The outage underscores how disruptions can ripple through health care. Regionally, the disruptions have been piling up too: Boston-area provider Fenway Health suffered an IT incident last month that disabled its internal pharmacy software, forcing staff to send patients to outside clinics for emergency prescription fills, as previously reported by Hoodline.
Five days before the Fenway Health disruption, nearby Everett closed City Hall after a severe cyber incident knocked out the city's internal technology systems, Hoodline also reported. Together, the incidents paint a picture of Greater Boston's public and private institutions repeatedly confronting sudden technology failures within a short stretch of time.
Outage Lands Amid Labor Tension at Brigham and Women's
Thursday's network failure also arrives at a particularly strained moment for MGB's workforce. Nearly 4,000 nurses at Brigham and Women's Hospital set an open-ended strike date for October 14 after 25 failed bargaining sessions over wages, health insurance, and unit staffing, according to NBC10 Boston. That means hospital leadership is managing a systemwide technology breakdown less than a week before a potential walkout by thousands of nurses, compounding the operational pressure on an already large and complex health system.
The outage also underscores the importance of safeguarding patient data. For now, officials say patient care remains ongoing despite the outage, and staff continue to rely on paper-based downtime protocols until systems are restored.
