A Code Yellow was announced by Eastern Health on the morning of Thursday 9 March, after its hospitals experienced a “significant IT system outage”, with systems now restored.
At 2.45pm, the public health service — which runs both Maroondah Hospital in Ringwood and the Angliss Hospital in Upper Ferntree Gully — released an update confirming critical applications were back online.
“As such, Eastern Health Incident Command has stood down the Code Yellow – Internal Emergency. A detailed review will now be conducted,” the statement said.
“During the IT outage, downtime procedures and business continuity plans allowed a majority of services to continue with only limited interruption.”
Eastern Health released a statement at 7.45am on Thursday 9 March detailing the issue.
“A Code Yellow Internal Emergency has been declared across our health service. The issue has been caused by a critical piece of IT infrastructure outage that we are currently working to rectify,” the statement said.
“There is no evidence of a cyber attack. Hospital systems have reverted to downtime procedures and business continuity plans have been enacted.”
A Code Yellow internal emergency are incidents that “threaten the safety of staff, patients, visitors or the physical structure of the facility that you are working at,” according to Healthcare Australia.
Just over three hours later, a second statement was released which said the specific cause of the issue had been identified and “remedial action is underway.”
“Business continuity processes and the return of several systems have allowed many services to continue as planned with limited interruption,” the statement said.
“Where this has occurred, patients are being notified of any disruption.”
