Hospitals hit by computer crash

MORE than 600 patients were affected by a computer crash at four Manchester hospitals.

The hardware glitch at Royal Oldham Hospital, Fairfield General, North Manchester General and Rochdale Infirmary meant staff struggled yesterday to access patient records and test results.

The problem is understood to have started at around 4am.

But in an update yesterday afternoon, a spokesman from The Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs the sites, said engineers should have resolved the issue by 6pm.

He also said that across the four hospitals around 20 non-urgent operations (of a daily average of 550) were cancelled and rescheduled, and 600 outpatient clinics (of around 4,000 daily) had been postponed as a result of the hardware glitch.

All patients affected received calls to inform them.

The trust has stressed the crash was caused by an internal hardware issue as opposed to an had external cyber attack or hack.

Medics switched to a ‘paperbased operation’ to overcome the problem with new patients and urgent cases. But outpatient clinics became a challenge because staff couldn’t see case notes.

A trust spokesman said A&E and maternity services were not affected and that patients scheduled for outpatient clinics and elective operations had continued to attend unless they had received a call to postpone.

The radiology and pathology departments were facing particular challenges, it’s understood. Some systems were still up and running while others were down.

The hardware failure follows a ‘few weeks’ of IT glitches which trust bosses say are unrelated to the problems which began yesterday.

A medic called the M.E.N. to complain that IT system problems had been affecting patient histories, test results and data for ‘at least a week.’ But this has been denied by the trust. A spokesman for Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust said last night: “The source of failure for the IT systems at Pennine Acute hospitals has now been identified and work is ongoing to fix the problem with IT engineers on site.

“All IT systems and email is due to be back online this evening. Business continuity plans will remain in place overnight until tomorrow morning. “Patient safety is our main priority and we have tried and tested contingency plans in place at our hospitals and community services to ensure services remain safe and patients are not unduly affected. “Due to our service continuity plans, our medical and nursing staff have been able to ensure that our services remain safe and that all essential services including our A&E, maternity, urgent surgery and cancer services have been unaffected.

“Our staff have been able to use paper-based systems and contingency plans to continue to treat the majority of patients on our wards and in our hospital departments.

“Patients who are due to attend hospital for an appointment, including an elective operation, should continue to attend their appointment unless they hear directly from the trust.”

Are you a patient who has been affected by the computer issues at the trust? Call the news desk on 0161 211 2330.