North East NHS patients have been issued an urgent warning by bosses that disruption to systems are set to continue following a global IT outage that saw services across the country come to a grinding halt.
North East pharmacies, GP practices and community health services are still set to feel the impact of the flawed update, which was rolled out by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike on Friday (July 19).
An estimated 1% of Windows devices, equal to 8.5 million were impacted by the faulty update, Microsoft has confirmed.
The update affected up to 50% of GP practices across the region which were forced to use paper patient records, handwritten prescriptions and phones rather than digital bookings.
GP practices will be open for business tomorrow (July 21) and patients are advised to attend appointments - but some practices may not be able to issue repeat prescriptions.
Whilst systems are expected to get back to normal by the end of next weekend, the outage will still have a "knock-on effect" on patient care in the coming days, say bosses.
Dr Neil O'Brien, chief medical officer at North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board (ICB) said: "We would like to apologise for any inconvenience the outage has caused and thank everyone for their patience as our teams have worked on restoring our systems.
"We are asking the public to use NHS services sensibly – only call 999 or go to A&E if it is life-threatening.
"GP practices will be back open on Monday morning, but if you don't need their help urgently, please consider calling your surgery on another day instead.
"If you have a booked appointment, please do attend unless you are told otherwise."
The British Medical Association (BMA) has also warned that normal GP service “cannot be resumed immediately” after the outage caused a “considerable backlog”.
Dr David Wrigley, deputy chairman of GPC England, the representative body for GPs at the BMA, added: “Friday was one the toughest single days in recent times for GPs across England. Without a clinical IT system many were forced to return to pen and paper to be able to serve their patients.
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“While GPs and their teams worked hard to look after as many as they could, without access to the information they needed much of the work has had to be shifted into the coming week.
“GPs have been pulling out all the stops this weekend to deal with the effects of Friday’s catastrophic loss of service and, as their IT systems come back online, we thank them and their staff for their hard work under exceptionally trying circumstances.
“We also thank patients for bearing with general practice in this unprecedented situation.”
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