Wawa's hospital is experiencing computer problems, affecting some local services.
A release from the Lady Dunn Health Centre confirms "technical difficulties" affecting the IT system started Wednesday, with CEO and Director of Patient Care Services, Kadean Ogilvie-Pinter, explaining the local problems stem from issues at Sudbury's Health Sciences North.
While the hospital remains open, Ogilvie-Pinter notes there are some changes to services available.
The release assures cancer care patients will be accommodated, and asks anyone with an ultrasound appointment to call the hospital to confirm the status of the appointment.
Ogilvie-Pinter notes services offered outside of the Wawa hospital are also affected.
Despite the issues, Ogilvie-Pinter emphasizes the ER is still open.
As Health Sciences North also administers the servers for the Lady Dunn Health Centre's website, that is also down at the moment.
The local hospital CEO says meetings are being held to address challenges stemming from this situation, with hopes to get out updates when possible.
Update at 4:10 pm: Health Sciences North Communications Specialist Jason Turnbull has sent the following update:
“Since Wednesday morning at 8:00, all 24 Northeastern Ontario hospitals have been impacted by IT challenges, caused by a zero day virus, as in a virus with no previous patches or solutions. As a preventive measure, all systems were put on downtime, successfully avoiding the dissemination of the virus. As a result, 21 of the 24 Northeastern Ontario hospitals have seen their main electronic medical record system, Meditech, put on downtime. The electronic medical record system for cancer programs in 12 hospitals, Mosaiq, is on downtime. Ten hospitals have their medical imaging system on downtime. Four hospitals have their email and servers for back office impacted. At HSN, about 75% of the systems are impacted by the downtime. HSN is working to begin restoring critical systems by tomorrow and planning to re-schedule cancelled chemotherapy and radiation treatments this weekend. We have no evidence to suggest that privacy of patient information has been breached.”