Alleged Oracle Misstep Leaves Hospitals Without EHR Access for Just Five Days

May 13, 2025

When I was young, hospitals were entirely run on paper records. It was a sight to behold. Recently, 45 hospitals involuntarily harkened back to those days, all because “Oracle Engineers Caused Dayslong Software Outage at U.S. Hospitals,” CNBC reports. Writer Ashley Capoot tells us:

“Oracle engineers mistakenly triggered a five-day software outage at a number of Community Health Systems hospitals, causing the facilities to temporarily return to paper-based patient records. CHS told CNBC that the outage involving Oracle Health, the company’s electronic health record (EHR) system, affected ‘several’ hospitals, leading them to activate ‘downtime procedures.’ Trade publication Becker’s Hospital Review reported that 45 hospitals were hit. The outage began on April 23, after engineers conducting maintenance work mistakenly deleted critical storage connected to a key database, a CHS spokesperson said in a statement. The outage was resolved on Monday, and was not related to a cyberattack or other security incident.”

That is a relief. Because gross incompetence is so much better than getting hacked. Oracle has only been operating the EHR system since 2022, when it bought Cerner. The acquisition made Oracle Health the second largest vendor in that market, after Epic Systems.

But perhaps Oracle is experiencing buyers’ remorse. This is just the latest in a string of stumbles the firm has made in this crucial role. In 2023, the US Department of Veteran Affairs paused deployment of its Oracle-based EHR platform over patient safety concerns. And just this March, the company’s federal EHR system experienced a nationwide outage. That snafu was resolved after six and a half hours, and all it took was a system reboot. Easy peasy. If only replacing deleted critical storage were so simple.

What healthcare system will be the next to go down due to an Oracle Health blunder? Cynthia Murrell, May 13, 2025

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under cybersecurity, News

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.