Some US hospitals are canceling non-emergency surgeries and procedures amid the global IT outage

• The global CrowdStrike IT outage is affecting countless industries, including healthcare.
• Some major US hospitals are struggling to access systems containing crucial patient records.
• The outage has led some health centers to cancel non-urgent surgeries and procedures.

Major hospital systems across the US are seeing effects on patient care in the wake of the mass CrowdStrike IT outage Friday.

Some health centers are struggling to access patients' digital records, including information vital to patient care, such as medical history and recent medications they've taken, and others are canceling non-emergency surgeries and procedures.

Mount Nittany Health in Pennsylvania said it was canceling "all non-emergent appointments, including surgeries" at multiple locations because of "significant disruptions across our entire health system," The Guardian reported.

Mass General Brigham in Boston canceled "all non-urgent visits" for Friday as it's "not able to access our clinical systems, including patient health records and scheduling," it said on its website. Its emergency rooms are still open, and it remains open for urgent appointments and procedures.

The Harris Health Quentin Mease Health Center in Houston said it was canceling "outpatient clinic appointments and elective hospital procedures," NBC News reported. It said that "hospital visitation and patient information" was not available at two hospitals due to the outage. Harris' health centers are open for clinic appointments but "some services may not be available," it said on social media.

New York's Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center said Friday afternoon that it was "having systems issues" but that most of its systems and procedures had been reinstated. The center had earlier in the day said it was "pausing the start of any procedure that requires anesthesia," Bloomberg reported.

Besides postponing procedures, the outage has also complicated patient care in other ways. Nurses across the country have said on social media, for example, that the outage has forced them to create patients' medical charts on paper due to computer system issues.