A major IT system issue is causing ‘severe delays for patients’ at four hospitals in Greater Manchester, the Manchester Evening News understands. The problems could persist into the weekend before a fix is found, according to sources.
Hospitals including Fairfield General, the Royal Oldham, North Manchester General and Rochdale Infirmary are dealing with an ‘IT issue affecting some digital systems’.
NHS trust bosses have said that business continuity plans are in place and ensuring the running of of hospital services are 'not affected'. They are encouraging patients to come to hospital as normal.
One staff member, however, says that the crash is causing ‘severe delays’, with ‘patients very unhappy and long, long waits’. A senior hospital source has also told the M.E.N. that the sweeping outage is proving 'disruptive to staff and patients', despite effective continuity plans which have moved wards from an online setup to a paper system.
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The Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust (NCA) operates Fairfield General, the Royal Oldham and Rochdale Infirmary. Before its formal debut last year, the NCA was preceded by Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, which also ran North Manchester General.
As Pennine Acute transitioned to become Northern Care Alliance, North Manchester General Hospital switched trusts and is now operated by Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust. But the centre’s current IT issues are understood to be due to its remaining connection to Pennine Acute systems.
The hospital will remain on the Pennine Acute IT systems until September, according to another senior source within the Greater Manchester NHS system.
In response to the M.E.N.'s questions about the IT system crash, Jude Adams, chief delivery officer at Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust said: “We are working on updating software to fix an IT issue which is affecting some digital systems at our Oldham, Bury and Rochdale care organisations, and at North Manchester General Hospital which is run by Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust.
"Staff have responded swiftly to put in place contingency plans to ensure this does not affect the running of services, and that patient appointments and operations can go ahead as planned. Patients should come to hospital as usual.”
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