Lawsuit Alleges No IT Infrastructure Backup Before Sutter Outage

Sutter Health failed to put in backup health IT infrastructure prior to a massive network outage in May 2018, despite being warned about the risk, charged Stuart James, former chief information service operating officer at the health system in a lawsuit filed July 24 in Sacramento Superior Court. In a lawsuit filed July 23, 2019, James alleged that he submitted a 124-page report to Sutter Health’s chief technology officer detailing the need to install backup infrastructure for its electronic health record (EHR) prior to the network shutdown, the Sacramento Bee reported. On May 14, 2018, a fire suppression system at a Sutter data center resulted in a 27-hour network outage, which prevented health professionals from being able to access health information, medical documentation, and medication lists. As a result, Sutter Health hospitals and surgery centers had to reschedule many procedures.