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If a hospital’s computer systems are reportedly down, that does not necessarily mean the hospital has stopped providing care. An electronic health record (EHR) outage can affect some or all of a record system and make coordination, medication workflows, or access to test results slower or more difficult. If someone may be having a life-threatening emergency, contact local emergency services and follow their directions. For a non-emergency visit, check the facility’s current instructions before traveling.
What a hospital systems outage can affect
“Systems down” can refer to an EHR or only part of it being unavailable. The scope varies; an outage alone does not establish that every department or service has stopped. The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) includes contingency planning for partial or full EHR unavailability in its SAFER Guides, updated February 27, 2026.
When electronic records are unavailable, staff may have trouble accessing information or coordinating work through normal electronic channels. AHRQ research on emergency department and clinical laboratory settings identified potential delays, communication disruption, and increased medical errors. A separate AHRQ review of patient-safety reports described problems involving laboratory workflows, medication processes, patient identity, and information availability.
What to do if you need care now
If it may be a life-threatening emergency
Do not delay seeking emergency help because you heard that a hospital’s computer systems are down. Call your local emergency number or emergency services, explain the situation, and follow their directions. The appropriate destination and available services depend on current local conditions; an IT outage by itself is not a safe basis for choosing another facility.
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If the situation is not an immediate emergency
- Call the hospital or check its official communications before you leave.
- Ask whether the department you need is accepting patients, whether your appointment or procedure is delayed, and whether the facility has issued alternate instructions.
- Follow the facility’s current directions. Do not assume that another hospital or urgent-care center is the right alternative unless the facility, emergency services, or local health authority directs you there.
Service availability during an active outage is facility-specific and can change. The sources cited here do not provide real-time status or routing instructions for any particular hospital.
If you are already at the hospital
Follow staff instructions. Staff may need to use manual or paper processes, and records may not be immediately accessible. AHRQ’s patient-safety guidance describes operational measures hospitals may use during downtime, such as paper charts, quick-reference procedures, and ways to communicate medication orders; these are hospital workflows, not tasks for patients to perform.
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Why downtime procedures matter
Hospitals are expected to plan for both planned and unplanned EHR unavailability. ONC’s Selecting or Upgrading Health IT page, last updated April 1, 2026, points organizations to contingency-planning practices intended to reduce the impact on clinicians and support staff. AHRQ’s work also describes contingency planning and simulation as ways for organizations to assess how they would respond without testing changes during live patient care.
The scale of the evidence matters: in a 2018 AHRQ project review, 76 of 80,381 incident reports collected over three years were identified as related to EHR downtime. Among those 76 reports, 46% indicated procedures were absent or not followed, nearly 27% indicated procedures were successfully executed, and 26% lacked enough information to determine whether procedures were present or followed. These figures describe the identified reports—not all hospital outages or patient visits—and should not be read as the odds that a particular patient will be harmed.
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AHRQ’s project studied an emergency department and a clinical laboratory. Its simulation modeling suggested that a limited laboratory test menu reducing workload by 40% or more could significantly reduce emergency-department time to physician assessment in that model. That is a modeled result for the studied setting, not a universal threshold or instruction for patients.
Quick Recap
How to interpret reports of an outage
- An outage can make care slower or more complicated, but it does not by itself prove that care has stopped.
- Which records or workflows are affected depends on the outage’s scope and the facility’s response.
- Only the hospital, emergency services, or local health authorities can give current, location-specific instructions about where to seek care.
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