Cornwall hospitals on road to recovery after IT incident

Trust blames ‘local issue’, not cyber attack

A network outage caused IT issues at hospitals across Cornwall this week, forcing appointments to be rescheduled.

The Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation Trust said on X on Tuesday that it had identified the issue and was working to restore systems.

It emphasised that the outage was "a local issue and not a cyberattack."

Some outpatient appointments and operations had to be rescheduled as a result, while the Trust instituted its business continuity plans.

Work to restore the systems went on overnight, and in a later update the Trust said that "outpatient appointments, planned operations and procedures" would go ahead today as planned.

A Trust spokesperson told us, "The majority of our IT issues are now resolved, and we continue to provide all our NHS services."

They added, "Some areas are still under pressure as a result of the outage, this includes in our emergency department and ambulance handovers. Unless it's a life or limb threatening emergency, we are asking people to use other services so we can help those who need it the most.

"We are grateful to our staff who worked together to continue to provide services and to minimise disruption for patients wherever possible during this time."