NHS staff told to plan for three weeks of disruption following cyberattack
The attack on supplier Advanced has raised the possibility of deadly medication errors and misdiagnosis
Health officials have warned that a hack that has severely disrupted NHS IT systems might prevent medics from accessing patients' records for three weeks.
The software system that is used by several NHS trusts was shut down last week following a cyberattack.
The intrusion has made it impossible for thousands of hospital employees to access patient records and notes, raising the possibility of deadly medication errors and misdiagnoses.
Advanced, a British software and managed services provider with 25,000 customers, was the target of the attack. The company, which says 140 NHS trusts use its software, found the security issue, impacting its Adastra and Carenotes systems, on Thursday.
Adastra is used to refer patients for care, including ambulance dispatch, scheduling after-hours appointments, and issuing emergency prescriptions. As many as 85% of NHS 111 providers and several out-of-hours services use Adastra.
Carenotes gives clinicians immediate access to patient records for both adult and youth mental healthcare services.
Simon Short, Advanced's chief operating officer, confirmed on Friday that the outage was the result of a cyberattack, although he was unable to predict when the outage would end.
Hospital staff are now being advised to prepare for at least three weeks of disruption.
Health authorities have warned that 111 callers may have lengthier wait times than usual, although they are advising the public to continue using the NHS as usual, which includes dialling 999 in case of an emergency.
The Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust has informed staff that it is putting emergency procedures in place to address issues arising as a result of the outage.
CEO Nick Broughton said in an email to staff that the hack targeted both the Trust's financial system and the system used to refer patients for treatment.
"We have now been advised that we should prepare for a system outage that could continue for two weeks for Adastra and possibly longer than three weeks for Carenotes," he said.
The note also said that measures are being taken to manage the enormous amount of work and effort that would be required to recover from this incident.
The Trust claimed that staff members had skipped vacation time and worked all night to attempt to find solutions.
"The whole thing is down. It's really alarming… we're carrying a lot of risk as a result of it because you can't get records and details of assessments, prescribing, key observations, medical mental health act observations," an NHS director said.
"You can't see any of it… Staff are going to have to write everything down and input it later."
The director added they are finding it difficult "to discharge people, for example to housing providers, because we can't access records."
The news comes after a significant IT failure at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust in London last month that led the trust to reschedule patient appointments for days.
The "critical site incident" resulted in the cancellation of some operations and re-routing of seriously ill patients to other hospitals in the city.