NHS hospitals declare ‘critical incident’ after global IT meltdown

Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust has declared a critical incident amid the major IT outage.

A statement on its website said: ‘Royal Surrey has declared a critical incident due to external IT issues which are widely affecting services including ours. This issue has affected Varian, the IT system we use to deliver radiotherapy treatments.’

Follow our live coverage of the global IT meltdown here

The trust said it had contacted patients who were due to have radiotherapy this morning to reschedule appointments.

‘We hope these systems will be up and running soon and will directly contact patients who are due to have radiotherapy appointments if we are unable to deliver their treatments. Please attend your appointments unless you have heard otherwise.’

An update said the hospital is now able to deliver radiotherapy services and this afternoon’s appointments will take place as scheduled.

It added: ‘However, there is still some disruption to the radiotherapy system that may affect appointments running into next week. Please continue to attend your appointment unless you are contacted directly.’

Thousands of GP practices across England have been affected by the global IT outage, which has hampered the booking of appointments and issuing of prescriptions.

NHS England said there was an issue with the EMIS Web system, which is understood to be used by about 60% of practices in England.

It is believed that around 3,700 GP practices may be affected.

Patients with ‘minor ailments’ are being sent to pharmacies from GP surgeries, according to the chief executive of the Independent Pharmacies Association (IPA).

Dr Leyla Hannbeck said: ‘Pharmacies are experiencing delays in prescriptions arriving through GP systems as the systems are down, and there are also delays in receiving medicines in stock due to some wholesalers experiencing IT system failures.

‘As the GP appointment system is down more patients are being referred to pharmacies for minor ailments.

‘We are asking the public to be patient if there are delays because these issues are outside of our control and we are doing everything we can to ensure patients receive their medicines and treatments.’

A spokeswoman for NHS England said: ‘The NHS is aware of a global IT outage and an issue with EMIS, an appointment and patient record system, which is causing disruption in the majority of GP practices.

‘The NHS has long-standing measures in place to manage the disruption, including using paper patient records and handwritten prescriptions, and the usual phone systems to contact your GP.

‘There is currently no known impact on 999 or emergency services, so people should use these services as they usually would.

‘Patients should attend appointments unless told otherwise. Only contact your GP if it’s urgent, and otherwise please use 111 online or call 111.’

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