The global IT outage is causing serious problems for the NHS, including GP surgeries, with some patients having to be turned away for routine appointments and only seeing A&Es.
GP practices are experiencing major problems because they cannot access patients’ medical records and refer patients for tests or appointments at their local hospital.
“Our members are telling us that today’s outage is causing significant disruption to GP practice bookings and IT systems,” said Prof Kamila Hawthorne, Chair of the Royal College of GPs.
“Disruptions like these impact our access to important clinical information about our patients, as well as our ability to book tests, make referrals and determine the most appropriate treatment plan.”
If clinics are unable to provide their usual care, this can lead to a backlog of patients needing to be seen by a GP, admitted to hospital, or both.
It could also lead to people seeking help in already overloaded emergency rooms.
Pharmacies were also affected. Many pharmacies were unable to provide patients with the medications they needed as quickly as normal. This was due to delays in receiving prescriptions from GPs as a result of the glitches in the Windows operating system.
Some hospitals have also had to restrict certain types of care, including radiotherapy. The Royal Surrey NHS trust declared a “critical incident” earlier on Friday, as the outages affected the company’s IT system and cancelled radiotherapy appointments the company was due to provide to cancer patients.
A statement said: “Royal Surrey has reported a critical incident due to external IT issues which are having a significant impact on services, including ours.
“This issue has impacted Varian, the IT system we use to deliver radiotherapy treatments. This means we are currently unable to deliver our planned radiotherapy treatments. We have contacted our patients who were due to receive radiotherapy this morning to reschedule appointments while we work to resolve these issues.”
However, it was later said that the radiotherapy appointments scheduled for Friday afternoon would go ahead, but that “there is still some disruption to the radiotherapy system, which may impact appointments running into next week”.
Around 3,700 GP practices in England are said to have been affected, the PA Media news agency reported. They are the 60% of practices that use a patient records and appointments system called EMIS, which is not functioning normally today. “EMIS is down,” a GP source said.
Matt, a 24-year-old student from London, had an appointment with his GP at 9am on Friday to get a prescription for antibiotics for an acute ear infection, but the appointment was cancelled because the clinic was closed.
“They called me 20 minutes later to say I had to come back and that I could get a prescription online, but I couldn’t get to it online and now the GP surgery isn’t answering the phone. I have an exploding headache.”
Matt said he went to the clinic for the third time hoping to pick up a paper prescription, but was told this was not possible.
“They can’t write a physical prescription because they don’t have physical forms, since everything is done online. They told me I might have to wait for someone to come and deliver them, (before saying) they can’t write them at all,” he said.
“They advised that I could go to a private GP and that they might have the relevant form, otherwise I would have to wait until Monday to get (a prescription). They said I could try A&E, but they are not sure how long the wait times are as they do not know which systems are down where.”
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Sophie, from Bolton, has stage two breast cancer and was due to have chemotherapy at a health centre on Friday afternoon. “I have treatment every Friday but this morning they rang and said ‘don’t come until we call you’. My drugs are made for me in a lab and the lab uses Windows so they don’t have the drugs.”
Sophie, 46, was due to change medication next week and is unsure how the rest of her treatment will be affected by the loss of Friday’s chemotherapy session and the IT glitch.
“There will be people who have chemotherapy for two to three days in a row, and this can have a big impact on them because we don’t know how long it’s going to last,” she said. “Of course you don’t want to miss any treatment, it feels kind of important.”
Pharmacists treating people with minor ailments who are unable to get an appointment with their GP have asked the public for patience as they try to resolve the medicine supply issues.
Dr Leyla Hannbeck, chief executive of the Independent Pharmacies Association, said: “Pharmacists are experiencing delays in receiving prescriptions through GP systems because systems are down. There are also delays in receiving medicines in stock because of IT system failures at some wholesalers.
“Because the system for appointments with the GP is down, more patients are referred to the pharmacy for minor ailments.
“We ask the public to be patient if delays occur as these issues are beyond our control and we are doing everything we can to ensure patients receive their medicines and treatments.”
NHS England said: “The NHS is aware of a global IT outage and an issue with EMIS, an appointments and patient records system, which is causing disruption to most GP practices.
“The NHS has been putting in place measures to manage the disruption for years, including the use of paper patient records and handwritten prescriptions, and the usual telephone systems.”