Our Hospital's First Ebola (Computer) Virus Scare

Our hospital recorded its first ebola scare today. A woman came in for a routine outpatient procedure. She has been coming to us regularly for months so nobody was especially on guard about any potential health hazard with this lady.

When we opened her electronic medical record, a stunning display popped out. Right at the top of the page, in bold red background lettering, the computer had declared she was positive for the ebola virus. A minor panic nearly ensued as everybody started scrambling for protective gear and wondering how we would all get along as roommates for the next 21 days in quarantine.

Then cooler heads prevailed. A quick call to the IT department confirmed that this was an error. In fact, if we had looked up every patient that was in the hospital at the moment, they all had the same ebola warning. The department was inserting new programming into the system for the diagnosis of ebola, which didn't exist before. Somehow it had crossed over into the live system and infected every patient's chart (pun intended).

After that we all gave a big sigh of relief and laughed at the stupidity of IT. Now we can go back to ignoring the big bold warnings about our patients with MRSA, VRE, MDRO, etc...