Boston hospitals, flights, transit hit in worldwide Microsoft outage

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The Crowdstrike outage affecting Microsoft computers worldwide Friday caused disruptions for at hospitals, airports and more across the Boston area.

Several hospital systems in the Boston postponed elective surgeries and medical appointments in the aftermath of the global outage, and many doctors were forced to work.

Here’s a summary of what’s been impacted:

Issues with flights at Boston’s Logan airport

There were long lines at Boston Logan International Airport, where dozens of planes were delayed or canceled personnel cited a computer issue.

The Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement Friday that it is “closely monitoring a technical issue impacting IT systems at U.S. airlines. Several airlines have requested FAA assistance with ground stops for their fleets until the issue is resolved.”

Communication issues come less than an hour after Microsoft resolved its service management operations and connectivity issues that impacted several low-cost carriers.

It’s not clear whether the decision to delay new flights is related to that issue. However, Frontier Airlines, Sun Country Airlines and Allegiant were impacted by the problem.

Though leaders with Frontier, according to Reuters, said they were in the process of resuming normal operations late Thursday night, and that their ground stop had been lifted.

This comes after Frontier canceled 147 flights and delayed 212 others Thursday, according FlightAware.

The affected airlines said in a statement they are working to resolve this issue.

Issues at RMV, MBTA

Gov. Maura Healey’s office says that while there’s no impact on MBTA service, Commuter Rail real time train location and arrival prediction information are currently unavailable. This technical issue is also affecting boarding information at Boston stations.

T officials say they’re “working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.”

Also impacted was the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles, who canceled appointments before 10 a.m. However, road tests will still be held, Healey’s office said.

Credit card payments can’t be made online and car inspections will not occur, according to Healey’s office.

Massive IT outage hits hospitals across Mass.

More than 40 hospitals and health care systems in Massachusetts use Epic, a popular cloud-based electronic health records system that was impacted by the digital disruption.

“It’s a big, big, big deal that it’s down,” said phlebotomist Kerry Grant, who works at Massachusetts General Hospital-Waltham.

Mass General Brigham and Dana Farber were among the Massachusetts health care giants that postponed non-emergency procedures Friday.

All elective and non-emergent surgeries, procedures and non-urgent ambulatory care at Mass General Brigham sites will be canceled for Friday, a spokesperson for Mass General said.

An urgent internal memo at Mass General said it has activated incident command across the system. All leadership and technical teams were working on addressing it, using what’s known as “downtime procedures” developed in training.

A Tufts Medical Center spokesperson said they were “in close contact with the vendor. We are in the process of assessing the impact of the disruption on our clinical and surgical operations.”

A source at Newton-Wellesley Hospital said it was like being back in the dark ages: using paper charts, lab requisition orders, lots of phone calls and delays between units.

At Mass General, a former employee told NBC10 Boston they rely on Microsoft Teams for vital hospital operations and constant communication in the hospital, such as scheduling, meetings and internal messaging.

Boston EMS says they were dealing with some system issues, but ​their 911 calls haven’t been affected​, adding that their services have been and continue to be available.

The Department of Public Health is working with hospitals to go to downtime procedures and continue to provide care, Healey’s office said, adding that the department’s Operations Center in Marlborough is taking calls from healthcare providers.

“The administration is aware of national reports that some banks have been impacted and is monitoring the situation in Massachusetts,” said a spokesperson. “We are aware that some airlines have been affected, which is causing impacts to flight. We are in touch with Massport, who urges passengers to check with their airline for flight status.”

Mass., NH 911 systems

Massachusetts’ 911 system didn’t experience problems during the outage Friday morning.

In New Hampshire, however, the 911 server system was briefly experiencing a temporary interruption believed to have been caused by a software vendor, the Division of Emergency Services and Communications said.

Residents were reminded to only call or text 911 if they’re experiencing an emergency.

Outage causes disruptions for businesses in Mass., NH

Starbucks customers at an impacted store in Beverly were getting free drinks at the drive-thru Friday morning for the inconvenience.

A Home Depot on Route 28 in Salem, New Hampshire, was reportedly experiencing system issues. It’s unclear if the problem has been resolved.

Back in Boston, the city officials say services may be impacted by the global technology service outage.

They asked residents to call ahead before trying to access service at municipal building.

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