‘It’s chaos’: Surgeries delayed, staff resort to pen and paper amid Sydney hospital IT outage

Sick children had surgeries postponed and staff were forced to revert to pen and paper after a major IT outage at Sydney’s two paediatric hospitals.

The Children’s Hospital at Westmead and the Sydney Children’s Hospital Randwick declared code yellow emergencies on Wednesday afternoon due to technical issues affecting phone lines and internet connections within the hospital network.

A paper note taped to a chair at the entrance of the Children’s Hospital at Westmead on Thursday alerted staff and visitors to the code yellow affecting communications and phone lines.

In a statement on Thursday afternoon, Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network (SCHN) said the issue had been resolved.

Several planned surgeries across the network had been rescheduled, a spokesperson said.

“We have apologised to these patients and their families for the delays, and are in communication with them,” they said.

The hospitals were yet to establish if telehealth appointments were affected by the outage, but the spokesperson said any that were missed would be rescheduled.

Emergency and outpatient services continued to operate at both sites, the spokesperson said.

In NSW hospitals, a code yellow is called for internal emergencies caused when essential services fail or are under threat.

The hospitals did not respond to questions about what caused the outage.

A since-deleted post, published on the hospitals’ social media accounts on Thursday afternoon, said the hospitals were continuing to experience communication issues. Patients would be contacted if there were any changes to their appointments, the post said.

An earlier post said there was “no impact on patient care” and contingency plans were in place.

In social media posts on Wednesday, writer and poet Omar Sakr said the emergency staff treating his son, who has cancer, could not access his clinical history, including the type and dosage level of his medications.

“It’s chaos,” he said. “Our nurses and doctors are goddamn heroes. They are running around like mad … It’s been several hours.”

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