'Mission critical' IT systems are 'back up and running' at four major Greater Manchester hospitals after weeks of technology chaos saw 'severe delays to patient care', staff have said. But the root cause of the IT crisis has yet to be revealed by hospital bosses as IT teams continue analysis work.
The IT glitches continued for weeks after starting on May 18, forcing vital appointments and surgeries to be cancelled, as well as causing A&E delays, according to multiple NHS staff. Experts have been flown in from the U.S.A to find a fix, and the hospitals moved to a paper system in the meantime, with documents being handwritten.
As of this afternoon, June 7, 'mission critical' systems are back up and running, says one senior hospital source. "[They] have ensured that any patients needing urgent treatment have been rebooked - it’s taken a phenomenal amount of work by staff to keep the show on the road," the source said.
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It's understood that the IT glitches at Fairfield General , Rochdale Infirmary, the Royal Oldham and North Manchester General have disrupted even the most basic tasks. The systems that have been down included those storing patients’ medical records, meaning doctors could not go ahead with surgeries and appointments.
The IT applications used to retrieve test results, including blood, MRI and CT scans, were also out of action, medics have told the Manchester Evening News Ambulances were seen queueing up outside the affected hospitals' emergency departments.
Although the Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust (NCA) has not yet given a cause for the IT concerns, it has ruled out any cyber-attack, malware or hacking. Bosses added that all patient information was kept safe during the outage.
Dr Chris Brookes, Deputy CEO and Chief Doctor at Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust said: “Our priority at the moment is to continue with the detailed work our Digital IT team and suppliers are doing to restore our IT systems.
"We are making good progress and more critical systems are being tested and released to staff for use each day.
"Once services are fully restored, we will thoroughly review the root cause analysis work our Digital IT team and service providers are completing. Using this, we will rapidly implement any lessons learned to prevent this situation occurring again in the future. I would like to reiterate my apologies to anyone whose care or experience has fallen below our usual standards.
"Those who have had their surgery and appointments cancelled will be contacted and rescheduled as soon as possible.”
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