PORTLAND, Ore. — Oregon Health and Science University's phone system is back up and running after an outage Thursday morning that stretched into the early afternoon. The hospital had urged patients to use the online MyChart system to contact their providers or call 911 for emergencies. Officials told KGW just before 2 p.m. that the main system had been restored.
The disruption began at about 8:30 a.m., according to an emailed statement from OHSU's communications team. All calls into and out of OHSU are not going through, according to a message posted to the top of the home page of hospital's website Tuesday morning.
The full extent of the outage was not immediately clear, but appeared to be system-wide. Multiple people emailed KGW Thursday morning and said they had been unable to connect when they tried to place calls to OHSU facilities. Officials said in some cases physicians were temporarily using their personal cellphones, with the numbers masked, to contact patients.
OHSU said it was using a backup phone system and other secure communications to continue operations, but was also temporarily diverting ambulances away from OHSU hospital to other local hospitals to minimize the impact on the system. The hospital's information technology team was working to identify the cause of the problem and fix it, according to the communications team email.
The Tuesday afternoon message from OHSU officials did not include the cause of the outage and did not mention whether the cause is known.
This is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available.
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