Tech Outage Disrupts South Jersey Hospital Network

SOUTH JERSEY — One of inland South Jersey's major health care providers has been experiencing issues from Friday's global technology outage.

The CrowdStrike disruption has caused delays in check-ins for Virtua Health, which has several hospitals and health care facilities throughout the region. But the outage isn't impacting essential patient care, a Virtua spokesperson told Patch at 1:30 p.m. Friday.

"Virtua Health has implemented its backup systems and policies to enable both hospital and outpatient services to continue safely and with minimal interruption," Daniel Morse, Virtua Health's communications director, told Patch in a statement. "Our electronic health records system (Epic) and MyChart patient portal are both functioning, after some brief disruptions overnight. Our teams continue to work diligently to ensure patient safety, which is our top priority, and to avoid any inconvenience for those we serve."

Virtua Health has five hospitals — located in Marlton, Mount Holly, Camden (Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital), Voorhees and Willingboro. The health care provider also has several urgent-care centers, surgery centers and medical offices throughout South Jersey.

The widespread technology outage, which centers around cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, has impacted air travel, hospitals and companies and services throughout the world. Many hospitals and doctor's offices have had issues with their appointment systems, with some delaying elective surgeries and other care as a result.

CrowdStrike said the issue occurred when it deployed a faulty update to computers running Microsoft Windows. The problem wasn't caused by a security incident or cyberattack, the company said.

AtlantiCare, a Jersey Shore-based health system, reported outage issues Friday morning.

"We anticipate there will be delays in service, but our critical patient services are operational," AtlantiCare announced.

AtlantiCare has several urgent-care centers in Greater Philadelphia. Most of its facilities, including both hospitals, are located in Shore communities.

Patient care at Cooper University Health Care has not been impacted, a spokesperson for the health network told Patch.

"We are checking with our vendors to see if there are any secondary systems used by other departments that may be affected," Wendy Marano, a Cooper spokesperson, told Patch. "But in terms of patient care, it's business as usual."

Jefferson Health's operations haven't been impacted by CrowdStrike, a spokesperson told Patch.

Inspira Health, with hospitals in Gloucester and Cumberland counties, does not use CrowdStrike and was not impacted.

"We are, however, monitoring each of our systems as well as connecting with our partners to understand if they've been impacted — and potential implications to our system," Cathy Moss, an Inspira spokesperson, told Patch on Friday.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

This article contains Associated Press reporting.