‘I’m absolutely dreading it...’ GP on return to work after global glitch

Senior NI doctor calls for patience as staff deal with aftermath of worldwide tech fault

ONE of Northern Ireland’s most senior GPS said that she is “dreading” work today and called for patience from the public as staff deal with the aftermath of a worldwide computer glitch that struck on Friday.

Friday’s global outage began with a faulty file from US cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike. The company provides computer security to thousands of large organisations around the world, including airlines, banks, telecoms companies and broadcasters.

The Department of Health confirmed on Sunday that three hospital systems and one GP system were hit by the outage, causing problems across Northern Ireland.

Hospital issues included difficulties booking patients into operating theatres, accessing staff rosters, capturing digital endoscopy images and operating radiotherapy services, as well as some primary care services.

Affected GP practices were left unable to access their clinical system to view and update patient records, and they could not generate routine patient prescriptions and test requests, or see results of laboratory tests.

Dr Frances O’hagan, chair of the NI GP committee of the British Medical Association (BMA) told the Belfast Telegraph that Friday had been a “nightmare” for her and the other staff at her surgery.

“We couldn’t access anything in the patient record on Friday. So we couldn’t process any prescriptions that came in.

“We couldn’t see any details about the patient’s history. We couldn’t see any lab results. We couldn’t see any X-ray results. We couldn’t see any letters that may have come in on Friday from the hospital, because we couldn’t get into the system.

“We were paralyzed. It was horrendous for the staff. It was horrendous for the patients.

“We did our best with pen and paper and our knowledge of the patients. Thankfully, we had experienced staff on Friday, we had experienced doctors on Friday.

“We know our patients fairly well. But of course, you don’t know every medication that they’re on or the doses.”

There will be issues even when the system does come fully back online, as actions carried out on Friday will have to then be recorded in the system.

“For example, we had a death on Friday. We couldn’t do the death certificate on Friday. That’ll have to be done.”

When asked what direct support her practice had received from those who run the IT services for GPS, Dr O’hagan said: “None.”

“We got our information from the news. There wasn’t anything else available.”

EMIS, who run the software used by GPS, have been approached for comment.

While staff made it through Friday as best they could, Dr O’hagan said that disruption and delays “are going to run right through until next week.

“For example, the vast majority of patients who came to have their bloods taken in the treatment room didn’t have them done because the nurses couldn’t see what was ordered.

“So they’ll have to all be rebooked onto any available slots, which will probably completely bung up next week in the treatment room.

“The same with any nursing appointments. It’s not only what happened on Friday, it’s going to be right through next week.”

Dr O’hagan added that she expects the “usual Monday chaos” at GP practices will be worse this week as “anybody who didn’t get seen on Friday will have an expectation of getting seen [today]”.

“I’m dreading it, absolutely dreading it. Anytime is a horrendous time for it to strike, but this is holiday time. We have staff off, as is their right to be off for holidays.

“It means we don’t have the additional capacity to bring more people in because we’re trying to cover annual leave as well as cover our day-to-day work.”

Dr O’hagan asked people in a statement to be patient with staff at GP surgeries.

“Whilst these systems return online, I would appeal to anyone accessing their GP to be patient while staff do their utmost to address this backlog of work.”

The Department of Health has confirmed “that three major hospital systems and one GP system were affected: Epic Electronic Care Record, Varian Radiotherapy System, Allocate Rostering System, EMIS GP System. The EMIS GP System is also used in the prison healthcare services operated by one of the hospital Trusts.”

“The NI Ambulance Service and GP Out of Hours services were unaffected.”

The Department said that “all GP practices will have core system access for the beginning of normal business on Monday, although some non-core interfaces such as Emergency Care Summary and Key Information Summary that do not affect direct patient care may be later in the week.

“Detailed communications are being issued to all affected GP practices for [this] morning.”

‘Anytime is a horrendous time for it to strike, but this is holiday time. We have staff off, as is their right to be off for holidays’