Global tech outage has impacted operations at Mass General Brigham, Milford Regional

Hospitals throughout Massachusetts, including in Milford Regional Medical Center and Mass General Brigham, have experienced disruptions to patient services, including some surgeries, following a major technology outage.

CrowdStrike, a U.S. firm that advertises being used by more than half of Fortune 500 companies, said one of its recent content updates had a defect that impacted Microsoft's Windows Operating System. This caused disrupted operations at banks, hospitals an media companies throughout the world, including Milford Regional Medical Center and Mass General-Brigham hospitals.

In a statement to the Daily News, Tricia Oliver, vice president for public relations, marketing and communications for Milford Regional, said the hospital and its patients' services were "impacted" by the outage, causing surgeries and outpatient services to be impacted.

"While only two patient surgeries needed to be rescheduled, a number of today’s outpatient appointments were impacted," Oliver wrote in a statement to the Daily News.

Statewide hospital systems shut down due to tech outage

Hospitals in the Mass General Brigham system reported that non-urgent surgeries, procedures and medical visits were canceled on Friday morning.

"Mass General Brigham remains open to provide care to patients with urgent health concerns in our clinics and emergency departments, and we continue to care for all patients currently receiving care in our hospitals," Mass General Brigham spokesperson Adam Bagni wrote in a statement to the Daily News.

Bagni continued: "We have dedicated every available resource to resolve this issue as quickly as possible, and we apologize for the inconvenience this has caused our patients. It is our highest priority to ensure that our patients receive the safest care possible."

Because hospitals were affected by the outage and many chose to cancel elective procedures Friday, the Department of Public Health was working with hospitals to put procedures in place for any downtime so they can continue to provide care, the governor's office said.

DPH has also activated its Department Operations Center in Marlborough to take any calls from health care providers across the state.

Mass General Brigham has 15 hospitals in its network, including Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital and Newton-Wellesley Hospital.

"A major worldwide software outage has affected many of our systems today, as well as many major businesses across the country," a note at the top of Newton-Wellesley Hospital's website reads. "As a result, all scheduled non-urgent visits at all Mass General Brigham hospitals, health care centers and outpatient clinics are canceled for Friday, July 19, 2024. Newton-Wellesley Hospital remains open to provide care to patients with urgent health concerns in our clinics and emergency rooms."

A spokesperson for MetroWest Medical Center told the Daily News that he had not they had not heard of any changes at the hospital due to the outages.

Besides hospitals, many flights out of Boston Logan Airport were grounded Friday morning due to the technology outage. Nationwide, hundreds of flights were canceled Friday morning, including flights from American Airlines, Delta Airlines and United Airlines.

The MBTA wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that bus tracking and countdown clocks were incorrect or non-functional. The T wrote on the Commuter Rail X account that real-time train location and arrival prediction were unavailable.

However, transit proceeded as planned, and the issues were fixed by Friday afternoon. Milford Regional Medical Center reported that all critical systems were operational on Friday afternoon.

The State House News Service contributed to this report.