Quebec’s health agency said Friday there is no indication that patient care or services have been affected by a global Microsoft outage that began Thursday. Santé Québec said the outage could potentially have affected appointment scheduling and the communication of results and prescriptions, but emergency plans were quickly implemented to limit the impacts. “We are still assessing the impacts, but at this time, there is no indication that patient care and services have been affected,” Santé Québec told CTV News. “It is important to note that the vast majority of communications with patients are not conducted by email, which has helped limit the impacts.” The health agency added that telephone remains its preferred method of contacting establishments, health-care professionals, and service teams. Microsoft announced Friday morning on social media that there was a “broad recovery and stability” across its services after users worldwide reported issues accessing the 365 suite and Outlook on Thursday. The health agency said its internal communication tools allowed it to maintain communications throughout the outage. “Microsoft made significant progress overnight toward resolving the issue, and we are now seeing emails begin to come through at both head office and the establishments,” Santé Québec said. “Our teams are working diligently to limit the impacts of the outage. Reducing the email backlog and minimizing delays in processing emails remain our priority.” The Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal (CHUM) and the Jewish General Hospital University Centre announced Thursday that the outage could impact appointment requests. On Friday, the CHUM said that all Microsoft 365 services were back online. “Although the services are operational again, it may take a little extra time to process certain appointment requests,” the CHUM wrote. It said it received all forms submitted to reschedule or cancel appointments and will process them. “However, please allow for a slight delay in the processing of your request. Our teams are working to process them as quickly as possible,” the CHUM wrote. As of Friday morning, the Jewish General Hospital University Centre had not provided an update.
