Traverse City Record-Eagle

June 30, 2011

Munson has 4-hour communications failure

By Bill O'Brien
bobrien@record-eagle.com

TRAVERSE CITY — Munson Healthcare officials are trying to figure out how to avoid a repeat of a four-plus-hour data systems crash and "resultant chaos" that gripped local hospitals and clinics this week.

A system failure Tuesday morning shut down computers, telephones, pagers and other telecommunications systems at Munson Medical Center and its Munson Healthcare affiliates in Frankfort and Kalkaska, an incident that administrators described as "unacceptable."

Munson officials still aren't sure why a back-up fiber optic circuit failed during a planned outage that started Tuesday at 7:30 a.m.

"You can rest assured we're looking very carefully at that," Munson Medical Center CEO Kathleen McManus said. "Of course, we need to know what happened."

McManus said no patients were adversely affected during the outage.

Staff writer Art Bukowski contributed to this report.

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