November 8, 2021 – St. John’s, NL: Eastern Health remains focused on the delivery of safe patient care, including emergency and urgent services in acute care facilities, while collaborating with the Newfoundland and Labrador Centre for Health Information (NLCHI) and other experts as health-care and clinical systems are gradually restored to full functionality.
Eastern Health continues to gradually increase services that do not rely on laboratory medicine and medical imaging services as information technology (IT) systems are brought back online, in a safe and controlled manner, and integrated with other applications. Further changes to service delivery will be communicated as information becomes available.
Patients and clients are being contacted directly if their appointment is going ahead, including those who need to travel a long distance for their appointment. If patients and clients have not been contacted directly, they should assume that their appointments have been cancelled. Patients are advised to answer unknown telephone numbers as it may be your health-care team calling to schedule an appointment. In addition, for those patients who are travelling long distances for an appointment, ample time will be given to accommodate those travel needs.
Email and fax continue to be affected by this outage and some referrals may not be received. Eastern Health recommends an alternative means of communications be used to forward referrals until further notice. In addition, grief and bereavement services and provincial ethics services can be contacted by phone at 709-777-8940.
For a list of up-to-date service information, patients can visit the IT Systems Outage webpage at www.easternhealth.ca/it-systems-outage/service-impacts/. Patients who have questions regarding appointments, procedures and surgeries scheduled for this time period may call the temporary patient inquiries line: 1-833-777-1276.
Services that are available include:
- Community-based services through our community offices.
- New requests to register for flu vaccine for house-bound and very frail individuals who are unable to access the vaccine through public clinics, pharmacies or physicians. Individuals may call toll-free 1-833-752-4167.
- Cancer Care program services including radiation therapy, chemotherapy and clinic appointments, at reduced capacity. Patients will be contacted directly for their appointments.
- Some mental health and addictions services, including DoorWays walk-in counselling services.
If patients feel there has been a change in their health status, they should contact their physician or nurse practitioner for an appointment. Patients who do not have a family doctor or a regular health provider can call the 811 NL Health Line (811 / TTY 1-888-709-3555) to speak to a registered nurse 24 hours a day, seven days a week about any health issue or concern.
Individuals who are experiencing an emergency should proceed to the nearest emergency department, or call 911 for an ambulance. Those who are experiencing a mental health crisis should call 709-737-4668 or toll-free at 1-888-737-4668.
We also thank the public for their continued patience, recognizing that many services may experience unexpected or unavoidable delays, as Eastern Health staff work diligently to adjust processes to ensure patient safety. Eastern Health recognizes the impacts to patients, clients and residents and we apologize for the inconvenience.
We are committed to keeping the public informed about this unanticipated disruption in services. Updates will be provided as information becomes available via Eastern Health’s website at www.easternhealth.ca and social media platforms, Facebook (www.facebook.com/EasternHealthNL) and Twitter (@EasternHealthNL).
– 30 –