Yea, that’s not how medicine works. There are patients that are in the hospital beds for a variety of reasons, and they don’t just go home during a storm. Those people still need some level of care, even if they’re not getting XRays and basic preventative care.

EMRs contain a record of when patients last took some critical but dangerous drug, what their allergies and reactions are, and many other important bits of information. When one of the patients starts to exhibit some new symptom or reaction (very stressful situation!), doctors and nurses look at the EMR to understand the best course of treatment or intervention.

When the EMR goes down, doctors and nurses revert to pen and paper. It’s very slow, and requires a lot of human handoff - which, critically, they’re less practiced in.

I literally help design IT resiliency for hospitals. This is absolutely how they work and part of their disaster planning. When there is an extended power outage they stop anything but vital surgery and work off pen and paper.

Which you got to after spending 3 paragraphs talking about what an EMR is for.