MARYVILLE, Tenn. — On Thursday, from 11:03 a.m. to 11:33 a.m., Blount Memorial Hospital said it had to divert ER patients after being hit with a network outage.
The hospital posted about the issue to its Facebook page around 11:30 a.m. That post has since been removed.
"Diversions happen if a facility is temporarily unable to provide a full scope of care in an emergency department. As part of a diversion, the facility would communicate to EMS to help ensure that those patients arriving to a hospital by ambulance are diverted to an alternate hospital facility," said Josh West, Blount Memorial Hospital's senior communications manager.
West said the hospital hasn't had a diversion in more than ten years, and this one was caused by a "significant network outage" that impacted computer systems at the hospital.
WBIR reached out to AMR of Blount County and the organization said no patients had to be taken to another hospital during the diversion.
Additional information about the network outage, such as its severity, was not immediately available.