November 16, 2021 – St. John’s, NL: Eastern Health advises that a number of acute services that were previously impacted by the province-wide IT outage are now resuming. Patients and clients should be aware that there may be times when services will continue to experience intermittent impacts as more systems are gradually brought online.
These services are as follows:
- Cancer Care services: All clinic appointments will proceed as previously scheduled starting tomorrow, November 17, 2021. These include physician, social work, dietitian and pharmacy appointments. Chemotherapy treatment appointments are going ahead and patients will be contacted by a health-care provider. Anyone who receives a phone call with a date and time, may proceed to their appointment as directed.
- Children and Women’s Health services: All previously booked appointments at the Janeway Children’s Health and Rehabilitation Centre, as well as women’s health clinics at the Health Sciences Centre, are proceeding. Patients will be contacted to confirm their appointments.
- Out-Patient Ambulatory services: All services have resumed. Patients will be contacted to confirm their appointments.
- Echocardigram: Urgent appointments only are continuing and patients will be contacted directly to schedule echocardiogram appointments at the Health Sciences Centre and rural health-care sites.
- Cardiac/Critical Care services: Patients scheduled for appointments or procedures, including appointments in the Cardiac Cath Lab at the Health Sciences Centre, from Tuesday, November 16, 2021 to Friday, November 19, 2021, will be contacted directly.
- Regional Surgical services: Patients scheduled for appointments or procedures from Tuesday, November 16, 2021 to Friday, November 19, 2021, will be contacted directly.
- Endoscopy services: Patients scheduled for appointments or procedures from Tuesday, November 16, 2021 to Friday, November 19, 2021, will be contacted directly.
Other previously announced services that have resumed include:
- Outpatient blood collection, including the Major’s Path location, and inpatient laboratory services.
- Medical imaging services. Patients will be contacted directly to confirm their appointment day and time. Nuclear Medicine and PET-CT remain limited to urgent cases only and those patients will also be contacted directly.
- Radiation therapy appointments.
- Mental Health and Addictions Services Doorways and counselling services.
- All Influenza and COVID-19 vaccination clinics.
- Community-based services through our community offices.
Eastern Health staff are working diligently to reschedule any missed appointments since October 30, 2021. Further updates will be communicated as more information becomes available.
As part of the on-going investigation into a cyber attack that impacted health-care IT systems, it has been determined that some personal information (PI) and personal health information (PHI) was taken from these systems. For more information, please visit www.gov.nl.ca/hcs/information-and-updates-on-cyber-incident/.
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.
We also thank the public for their continued patience, recognizing that many services have experienced unexpected or unavoidable delays. 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).
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