SEATTLE — Seattle Children's Hospital has closed their outpatient clinics for the day and is rescheduling some surgeries due to IT outages impacting many different industries across the globe.
The outage stems from CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm utilized by Microsoft. CrowdStrike pushed a software update through that included a "defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts," meaning systems worldwide that utilize the Microsoft technology were debilitated for hours.
Most of Seattle Children's IT systems were down Friday morning, but came back online in the afternoon.
Because of the earlier outage, all the outpatient clinics remain closed Friday.
While urgent care centers are open, they cannot accommodate virtual appointments. The Odessa Brown Children's Clinic, regional clinics and ambulatory clinics are all closed.
The hospital is contacting patients and families to reschedule certain appointments and surgeries.
Other healthcare providers are also struggling with the service outages Friday morning.
Providence confirmed that some clinical applications and workstations continue to be impacted, but they are working to restore service as quickly as possible.
Virginia Mason also saw computer system outages due to the CrowdStrike software update.
"We continue to provide safe, high-quality care to our patients and thank everyone for their patience as our teams take immediate action to restore any impacted systems. Patients will be contacted directly if their appointments are affected," the healthcare system said in a statement.
CrowdStrike posted an update on its website Friday morning that they had implemented a fix to the software defect, and were working with partners to get services back online. Many services will continue to be impacted throughout the day while the changes take effect.
"We understand the gravity of the situation and are deeply sorry for the inconvenience and disruption," reads a statement on the CrowdStrike website. "We are working with all impacted customers to ensure that systems are back up and they can deliver the services their customers are counting on.
The company counts 298 Fortune 500 companies, eight out of the top 10 financial services firms, seven out of the top 10 manufacturers, six of the top 10 healthcare providers and eight out of the top 10 food and beverage companies among its customers.