Patients at the Chatham and Wallaceburg hospitals may notice a lot more note-taking than usual this weekend.
The Chatham-Kent Health Alliance (CKHA) along with the Erie St. Clair Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) will be upgrading their computer systems. However, the upgrade means there will be a system-wide planned downtime on Saturday from 8 a.m. until 4 p.m.
"The downtime will accommodate an upgrade of the network infrastructure at the Regional Data Centre," said in a media release from the CKHA. "During the downtime, local servers and the connection to the Regional Data Centre will be unavailable in all clinical units at CKHA's Chatham and Wallaceburg sites."
Patient care should not be affected during the system downtime but there may some minor delays with wait times.
Hospital staff will go through a paper-based process when admitting patients and charting. Should an issue arise during the downtime, CKHA officials have played out scenarios and have built contingency plans to address them.
The CKHA's phone lines at both the Chatham and Wallaceburg stations will remain open during the downtime and the guest Wifi will be available.
