How a ‘mistake’ by Oracle engineers caused software outage in US hospitals

Oracle engineers mistakenly triggered a five‐day software outage at multiple Community Health Systems (CHS) hospitals. The outage was tracked to the company’s Oracle Health electronic health record (EHR) system, forcing affected facilities to revert to paper‐based patient records. The incident started last week, when routine maintenance work led engineers to accidentally delete critical storage tied to a core database. CHS activated its downtime procedures as “several” hospitals went offline, with trade outlet Becker’s Hospital Review later reporting that 45 of CHS’s 72 hospitals were impacted. A CHS spokesperson has also confirmed the outage and has clarified that it stemmed solely from a maintenance error and was neither a cyberattack nor a security breach.