Patients at Salem Health saw cancellations Friday morning due to a global technical outage which grounded airplanes, disrupted emergency services and affected companies worldwide.
Salem Health canceled all scheduled elective procedures before 10 a.m. as a precaution, but a spokesman said hospital operations are continuing normally and there is no threat to patient safety.
The outage was caused by a cybersecurity software update affecting Windows computer systems.
Salem’s fire and dispatch service weren’t affected at all, said Brian Carrara, Salem Fire Department’s deputy chief of administrative services. The department runs the Willamette Valley Communications Center, which manages regional 911 calls and dispatch.
Carrara said the only impact to the fire department is that its hiring software was down.
Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler declared an emergency early Friday morning over the outage, citing disruptions to local hospitals and critical city services.
Statewide, county and local hospitals, airports, public safety and emergency management agencies were impacted, said Oregon Department of Emergency Management spokeswoman Erin Zysett in an email.
Zysett said phone calls for emergency assistance were not impacted, though some dispatchers had to process calls manually due to computer system malfunction.
“The important takeaway is that people were still able to call 911 for assistance,” Zysett said.
At Salem Health, impacts to patient care have been limited, said spokesman Michael Gay in an email.
“The biggest impact has been some computer stations that are inaccessible to staff, requiring a manual fix. Our teams are systematically restoring impacted stations,” he said.
Gay said some elective procedures were rescheduled out of an abundance of caution. He did not respond to a question about how many patients were impacted.
“There have been no disruptions to the emergency rooms at Salem Hospital or West Valley Hospital. Patients should continue to access Salem Health services as needed,” he said.
Kaiser Permanente, which operates three clinics in Salem and one in Keizer, had some systems impacted and has activated a national command center to respond and keep patient care systems online.
“All Kaiser Permanente hospitals and medical offices remain open for care and service, and we are continuing to monitor our operations as we work to restore all affected systems,” spokeswoman Kimberly Mounts said in an email.
Other local services were operating as normal.
The Salem Area Mass Transit District, which uses computers to organize its fleet, had all systems running normally Friday morning according to spokeswoman Patricia Feeny.
Avelo, the airline whose flights serve the Salem-Willamette Valley Airport, also did not see issues.
“No impact on us. Business as usual at Avelo across our entire network,” said Avelo spokeswoman Madison Jones.
Joe Siess contributed reporting.
Contact reporter Abbey McDonald: [email protected] or 503-575-1251.
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Abbey McDonald joined the Salem Reporter in 2022. She previously worked as the business reporter at The Astorian, where she covered labor issues, health care and social services. A University of Oregon grad, she has also reported for the Malheur Enterprise, The News-Review and Willamette Week.