Mass General Brigham network outage sends hospitals to paper procedures; recovery begins

A network outage across Mass General Brigham on Thursday, October 8, pushed hospital teams onto backup procedures after some computers and other digital devices went offline. Patient care continued apart from some elective outpatient procedures, the health system said, while staff began bringing systems back online later that day.

The interruption reached beyond a public-facing website. It affected the digital tools used inside a major health care network, requiring teams to continue work through established alternatives while restoration was under way. Reports available on Friday did not establish when every affected system would be operating normally again.

Computers went offline around noon

According to NBC10 Boston’s reporting, the incident began around noon Thursday. A notice sent to Massachusetts General Hospital staff described sporadic network outages across all sites, and an incident command team was working to restore services.

The broadcaster reported that sites were bringing systems back online by about 5:50 p.m. A hospital representative described downtime procedures as the backup arrangements used when staff cannot access computers; those arrangements can include paper forms.

That recovery update is not the same as an all-clear. It marks the start of systems returning, rather than a confirmed end to the disruption across the organization. The reporting did not provide an affected-device count or say that every hospital’s computers were simultaneously unavailable.

Care continued, but some elective procedures were affected

WCVB obtained a statement from Mass General Brigham saying that some computers and digital devices had gone offline around noon. The health system said patient care had continued except for some elective outpatient procedures, and that all sites had begun bringing systems back online and returning to normal operations. It expected that work to continue overnight.

Mass General Brigham also said the incident was not a cyberattack. That is the provider’s stated assessment; the reports reviewed did not disclose a detailed technical explanation for the network failure.

There was no published tally in those reports of procedures affected or patients impacted. The available evidence supports a disruption to digital operations and some elective care, not a claim that hospitals closed or that all treatment stopped.

Cooley Dickinson used paper forms and alternative communications

The Daily Hampshire Gazette’s October 9 report documented the effects at Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton, Massachusetts. Most patient care continued there despite the wider network interruption.

Hospital spokesperson Kelly Mitchell told the newspaper that staff were using paper forms and alternative ways to communicate. She also said processes were in place to update electronic records once systems were restored. The newspaper reported that some networks had come back online overnight, while a complete recovery time remained unclear.

Those details show how staff continued working during the digital interruption. They do not establish that every service ran unchanged, or provide a basis to infer patient harm, data loss or a security breach. Such findings would require additional evidence.

Follow the service status as recovery develops

For readers following digital disruptions, Status Is Down’s real-time view and News archive provide a place to follow reported service problems and subsequent updates. This article describes the hospital network’s reported condition; it does not substitute for appointment information from a patient’s care team.

Website owners and digital-service teams can explore Status Is Down plans and sign up for the platform’s monitoring services. Monitoring can support awareness of service interruptions; it does not establish a hospital’s internal recovery state or guarantee uninterrupted operation.

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