The incident affected EMR systems but not patient care, the system said.
The computer networks at Allina Health facilities are operating again after an eight-hour overnight interruption earlier this week.
The systems were restored early Thursday morning, but the Minneapolis-based nonprofit system—which operates hospitals and clinics in Minnesota and Wisconsin—is still trying to make sense of what happened.
“The electronic medical record and other systems were affected. At this point the cause of the outage is still under investigation,” spokesperson David Kanihan told HealthLeaders Media in a statement Thursday, noting that workers followed the proper protocols to handle such an outage.
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“Caregivers had access to the information for each patient from the medical record system as part of the ‘downtime’ procedures, and therefore were able to continue to provide safe care,” Kanihan said. “Some equipment had to be operated in a manual mode, but staff are trained to do so when necessary.”
Prescription drug dispensing machines were among the network-connected systems that Allina switched into manual mode, The Star Tribune reported.
Kanihan reportedly told the paper that there have been no signs the outage was caused by an external threat, such as a hack.
HealthLeaders Media Senior Editor John Commins contributed to this report.
Steven Porter is an associate content manager and Strategy editor for HealthLeaders, a Simplify Compliance brand.