One week ago, Kelowna General Hospital implemented two emergency codes on the same night.
On the evening of Feb. 28, the hospital was alerted of a potential mass casualty involving a head-on crash along Highway 33.
Four people were said to be critically injured and a code orange, for multiple victims needing emergency care, was issued.
Soon after that, though, KGH issued a code grey — which is implemented when a critical systems failure occurs. In this case, the hospital’s entire computer system went down from about 11 p.m. to 3 a.m.
Doctors and nurses were unable to access patient files, including lab and diagnostic imaging results. That forced staff to go old-school and use paper-based charting, which was used until the system went back online.
“Although an extremely rare event, it’s a very serious event and we are taking it very seriously,” said Lindsay Taberner, executive director for KGH.
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Staff who worked that night told Global News that it made for a stressful and challenging evening.
While those at KGH received the care they needed, those on shift said that kind of situation is potentially dangerous and could compromise patient safety.
“I think in this situation, we were very successful in ensuring that no patient information was missed,” said Taberner, adding staff relied “heavily on our paper-based systems and ensuring that we were receiving our results in a timely manner from our fax machines.”
Interior Health is being urged to come up with a better contingency plan in case this happens again, to which it said it’s reviewing the double-code event.
“Can more be done? Well, that is absolutely a part of our internal review process,” said Taberner, noting that the health agency is looking at “opportunities to improve” the system.
Both IHA and those on duty praised staff efforts that evening.
“It was a very concerning event, absolutely,” Taberner said.
“But I really do want to highlight the work of our medical staff, our clinical teams and our support services who were working that night. They did a phenomenal job.”
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