In his memo to employees, Deal pointed to reliability and scalability issues Kaiser faces with its HealthConnect system.

When fully implemented, it is supposed to give Kaiser's 12,000 physicians and other users instant access to the medical records of some 8.4 million patients, along with e-messaging capability, computerized order entry and electronic prescribing. In addition, the system is supposed to integrate appointment scheduling, registration and billing functions.

But according to the report, that doesn't seem to be happening with any degree of regularity.

For example, a power outage on May 9 at Kaiser's data center in Corona, Calif., lasted for 55 hours and 7 minutes and affected the ability of numerous health care facilities to access the HealthConnect system. "This outage affected every Kaiser Permanente Region. ... Providers/clinicians across KP would not have access to medical information to treat members, process lab and pharmacy requests, and in some cases were in full down-time modes compromising direct member treatment, with the inability to access current medical information for decision making," according to the report.

Deal and an IT employee, who spoke to Computerworld on the condition of anonymity, said part of the problem with the HealthConnect system is that the Citrix Application Delivery infrastructure implemented by Kasier just can't handle the load of the Epic Systems.