Guy’s and St Thomas’ trust (GSTT) in London was forced to cancel operations, postpone appointments and divert seriously ill patients to other hospitals in the capital as a result of the IT crash. The condition means doctors cannot view patients’ medical notes remotely and must record 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 must call the imaging department, which overloads the department’s phone lines. GSTT has termed the problem as a “Critical Site Incident”. He apologized to patients and asked them to bring letters or other documents about their condition to their appointments to overcome doctors’ loss of access to their medical records. Both of its 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 patients’ histories and conditions. The GSTT confirmed on Thursday afternoon that the issue had not been 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 sick patients it had to admit: those with heart problems, those awaiting an organ transplant, those with vascular problems and those due to receive potentially life-saving extracorporeal membrane oxygenation therapy. A doctor at GSTT, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “This has a big impact. We are back to using paper and cannot see any existing electronic notes. We need to run basic tests such as blood tests and scans. There is no access to the results except by phone, and of course the whole hospital is trying to use this line. “Frankly, it’s a big patient safety issue and we haven’t been told how long it will take to fix it. We are on diversion for important specialty services such as cardiac, vascular and ECMO.” GSTT is a regional center of excellence for various areas of specialist care, including lung problems, intensive care and transplants. The Trust has publicly acknowledged, via messages on its Twitter feed, that it is experiencing problems with its technology, but has given few details about the extent of the disruption caused. Shortly after the first crash on Tuesday, he tweeted: “We are having some issues with our IT and phone systems.” On Wednesday it said: “We continue to have some issues with our IT and phone systems, which we are working hard to fix.” On Thursday, he tweeted again, saying he was “still working hard to fix issues with our IT systems.” He gave little detail in any of the tweets about the extent of the disruption. However, in her tweet on Thursday she hinted at how services are being affected, apologizing to patients who are “having trouble contacting us or had problems accessing our services”. Subscribe to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7am. BST He then added: “We are trying to contact anyone whose appointment we have to cancel. If you are visiting 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’s NHS Trust said: “As a result of the extreme temperatures on Tuesday, we experienced a significant disruption to our IT systems which is having an ongoing impact on our services. “While the majority of appointments have gone ahead, unfortunately we have had to postpone some procedures and appointments and we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. “The trust has business continuity plans in place to enable us to continue as much business as possible and ensure patient safety is a priority at all times. “Our teams are working around the clock to fix these issues as soon as possible.”
