Healthcare workers have resorted to using pen and paper at Box Hill and Angliss hospitals after an IT outage caused major disruptions at Eastern Health facilities.

Eastern Health declared a code yellow emergency on Thursday morning, saying the situation had been caused by an outage of critical IT infrastructure.

An IT outage has caused major disruptions to Eastern Health hospitals.Credit:Eddie Jim

“There is no evidence of a cyberattack,” the health service said in a statement.

Staff members have been struggling to access their email accounts, phones and patients’ medical records. Some have resorted to using pen and paper to access and communicate important information.

It’s understood that outpatient clinics cancelled all appointments for non-urgent patients, while surgeons were reportedly advised to only proceed with elective surgeries if they “know the patient well”.

Some doctors have been unable to view historic medical images of their patients.

A code yellow indicates there is an internal emergency affecting service delivery at a hospital.

It can be triggered for a number of reasons including the inability of staff to treat all patients waiting in an emergency department.

In the statement released on Thursday morning, Eastern Health said it had identified the issue and was working to fix it. It said patients were being notified of any disruptions.

“The return of several systems have allowed many services to continue as planned with limited interruption,” it said.

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