One of the NHS’s biggest hospital trusts is facing major problems after its IT system crashed due to extreme temperatures earlier this week.
Guy and St Thomas’ Trust (GSTT) in London has had to cancel operations, postpone appointments and divert seriously ill patients to other hospitals in the capital as a result of its IT merger.
The situation means that doctors cannot view patients’ medical notes remotely and have to write down all test results by hand. They also cannot remotely access the results of diagnostic tests such as X-rays and CT scans and MRIs, and instead have to call the imaging department, which is overloading the department’s phone lines.
GSTT has declared the issue as a “Critical Site Incident”. He has apologized to patients and asked them to bring letters or other documents about their condition to their appointments to help overcome the loss of doctors’ access to their medical records.
Both data centres, one at Guy’s Hospital and the other at St Thomas’ Hospital, were down on Tuesday afternoon as Britain experienced record temperatures. Air conditioning units meant to keep them cool failed, trust sources said.
As a result, the trust’s 23,500 staff lost access to the clinical applications they use to store and share information about patient histories and conditions.
GSTT confirmed on Thursday afternoon that the issue was not resolved.
It has significantly disrupted the normal functioning of GSTT hospitals. For safety reasons, the trust has been forced to divert to other hospitals four types of very ill patients it was due to admit: those with heart problems, those awaiting an organ transplant, those with vascular problems and those they must receive potentially life-saving extracorporeal membrane. oxygenation therapy.
A doctor at GSTT, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “This is having a major effect. We have gone back to using paper and we cannot see any existing electronic notes. We have to triage basic tests such as analysis of blood and scans There is no access to the results except by phone and of course the whole hospital is trying to use this line.
“Honestly, it’s a huge patient safety issue and we haven’t been told how long it will take to resolve. We’re on diversion for important specialty services like cardiac, vascular and ECMO.”
GSTT is a regional center of excellence for various specialist care areas including pulmonary, critical care and transplant.
The trust has publicly acknowledged, via messages on its Twitter feed, that it has been experiencing problems with its technology, but has given few details about the extent of the disruption caused.
Shortly after the crisis occurred on Tuesday, he tweeted: “We are experiencing some issues with our computer and phone systems.” He said Wednesday: “We continue to have some issues with our computer and phone systems, which we are working hard to resolve.”
He tweeted again Thursday to say he was “still working hard to fix issues with our IT systems.”
He gave few details in any of the tweets about the scale of the disruption. However, in his tweets on Thursday he hinted at how services were being affected, apologizing to patients who “have had problems contacting us or have had problems accessing our services”.
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He then added: “We are trying to contact anyone whose appointment we have had to cancel. If you visit us today, please bring any letters or documents we have sent you to your appointment, to help us reduce the risk of delays”.
In a statement, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust said: “As a result of Tuesday’s extreme temperatures, we have experienced significant disruption to our IT systems, which is having an ongoing impact on our services.
“Although most appointments have been moved forward, unfortunately we have had to postpone some operations and appointments and we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.
“The trust has well-established business continuity plans that allow us to continue with as much activity as possible and ensure that patient safety is prioritized at all times.
“Our teams are working around the clock to fix these issues as quickly as possible.”