The global IT outages are causing serious problems for the NHS, including GP surgeries, with some forced to turn away patients with routine appointments and see only those classed as an emergency.
Family doctor practices are experiencing major disruption because they cannot access patients’ records or refer them on for tests or appointments at their local hospital.
“Our members are telling us that today’s outage is causing considerable disruption to GP practice bookings and IT systems,” said Prof Kamila Hawthorne, the chair of the Royal College of GPs.
“Outages like this affect our access to important clinical information about our patients, as well as our ability to book tests, make referrals and inform the most appropriate treatment plan.”
Surgeries’ inability to provide their usual range of care is likely to create backlogs of patients who either need to be seen by a GP or receive hospital care or both.
It could also lead some people to seek help at already hard-pressed A&E units.
Pharmacies were also affected, with many unable to give patients medicines they need as quickly as usual because of delays in receiving prescriptions from GPs as a result of the outages, which involve the Windows operating system.
Some hospitals have also had to restrict some types of care, including radiotherapy. The Royal Surrey NHS trust declared a “critical incident” earlier on Friday, because the outages had hit an IT system it uses, and cancelled appointments for radiotherapy it was due to deliver to cancer patients.
In a statement, it 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. This means we are currently unable to deliver our scheduled radiotherapy treatments. We have contacted our patients who were due to have radiotherapy this morning to reschedule appointments while we work to fix these issues.”
However, it said later that radiotherapy appointments due to take place on Friday afternoon would go ahead but also that “there is still some disruption to the radiotherapy system that may affect appointments running into next week”.
About 3,700 GP practices in England are thought to have been affected, the PA Media news agency reported. They are the 60% of surgeries who use a patient records system and appointments system called EMIS, which is not functioning normally today. “EMIS has gone down”, one GP source said.
Matt, a 24-year-old student from London, had a GP appointment at 9am on Friday because he needed a prescription for antibiotics for an acute ear infection, but the appointment fell through as the clinic was closed.
“They called me 20 minutes later to say I should come back, and that I’d be able to get a prescription online, but I couldn’t access it online and now the GP clinic is not picking up calls. I’ve got an exploding headache.”
Matt said he went back to the clinic for a third time in the hope of picking up a paper prescription in person, but was told this was not possible.
“They are unable to issue a physical prescription because they don’t have physical forms since everything is done online. They told me I might have to wait until someone comes and delivers them, [before saying] they can’t issue them at all,” he said.
“They advised that I can go to a private GP practice and that they may have the relevant form, and that otherwise I need to wait until Monday to get [a prescription]. They said I can try A&E but they aren’t sure about wait times because they don’t know which systems are down where.”
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Sophie, from Bolton, has stage two breast cancer and was due to receive chemotherapy at noon on Friday at a health centre. “I have treatment every Friday but they phoned up this morning and said ‘don’t come until we ring you’. My drugs are made for me in a lab, and that lab uses Windows so they haven’t got the drugs.”
Sophie, who is 46, was due to switch drugs next week, and is uncertain how the rest of her treatment may be affected by the loss of Friday’s chemotherapy session and the IT outage.
“There’ll be people having chemotherapy two to three days in a row, and this could have a big impact on them, as we don’t know how long this is going to last.” she said. “Of course you don’t want to miss any treatments, it feels kind of important.”
Pharmacy operators, who are seeing people with minor illness who cannot get a GP appointment, asked the public to be patient while they tried to overcome drug supply problems.
Dr Leyla Hannbeck, the chief executive of the Independent Pharmacies Association, 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 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 appointment and patient record system, which is causing disruption in the majority of GP practices.
“The NHS has longstanding measures in place to manage the disruption, including using paper patient records and handwritten prescriptions, and the usual phone systems.”