A power outage affected the electronic patient information’s access. It was faced by all IT systems at Wellington Hospital.

It was informed by the Capital & Coast District Health Board that there was no risk to patients during the June 1 failure.

Yesterday’s reports stated that a high severity incident management process was invoked by board’s data centre staff.

Clinical and corporate support services executive director Leena Singh stated that during the outage, which began at 7.40pm and lasted several hours, both clinical and non-clinical IT services were affected.

She added, "The interruption was predominantly felt where various departments log patient information from one department into the patient system which is accessible directly by the ward."

Various other measures were used by the staff during the power cut like manual alternatives such as phoning wards directly to pass on urgent lab results as electronic results system could not be updated.

Singh informed that to make sure urgent information was not delayed extra staff were called in.

She stated, "Patient safety was not compromised in any way."

Earthquake-proofing work in a Wellington Hospital building was behind the problem, sources informed.