Regardless of paper files, computer files, hand written files or something carved into a stone tablet, a sensible surgeon never starts an operation unless they have all the data at hand, on the patient, their history, the doctor's own notes, and the treatment plan. This keeps the patient safe.
However, with electronic records, or test results, scan's etc, it can mean if the data is not readily available due to a computer glitch, the surgeon might have to cancel the operation. I have had to do this on a few occasions.
Some "die hard" old school surgeons (I approve of) would not start an operation, where computer scan data was used in the procedure (for example for bone fractures), was not available as a mylar film, on a simple film viewer with two fluorescent tubes, because they were worried if the computer went down during the procedure, they could not see what they were doing and it could lead to a bad outcome.
Medicine and surgery is now increasingly dependent on reliable computers and patient file data storage and access. Like all innovations, it can be a dual edge sword.
Also if the doctors and staff in some practice are familiar with some system, vintage or otherwise, if it goes down, it can cause chaos and it can take a while to adapt to a substitute system.
One interesting thing about paper records, which are inefficient, occupy a lot of space, bad for the planet etc etc, they are very reliable and work when the power goes down. They are not as long lasting as something carved into a stone tablet, but they are much longer lasting than any magnetic storage media or any electronic memory created to date. I can still look at notes that I wrote with pen in patient files that are 30 years old and they look like the day they were made. I cannot say the same of a video stored on VHS tape or a lot of other magnetic media used to store digital files.
Also, I would not be too concerned about the outer sheath issue on the power cable. To make that lethal would require two things:
1) The Garden Gnomes would have to come in the middle of the night and transpose the earth and the live wires in the plug or the connector.
2) Then on top of that they would have to disable the RCD (ELCB, residual current device) on the facility's circuit breaker box.
