NHS warns of GP disruption next week

Disruption to GPs caused by a global IT outage may continue into the coming week, NHS England has said.

A spokesman for the health service told the BBC that digital systems for GPs and pharmacies had been restored “in most areas” – but that surgeries would have to work through a backlog of appointments.

Practices across the UK have had to cancel routine appointments because of the issue, while pharmacies have been unable to access digital prescription records.

Friday’s outage – which also sparked major issues in the travel and banking sectors, among others – was caused by a faulty update to CrowdStrike antivirus software, which crashed Microsoft systems.

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said the issue had been fixed on Friday – but admitted that it could take “some time” for some computer systems to be restored.

The NHS England spokesman said: “As practices recover from the loss of IT systems on Friday, there may be some continued disruption, particularly to GP services, in some areas into next week as practices work to rebook appointments.

“The advice for Monday remains that patients should attend appointments as normal unless told otherwise.”

The comments come after some healthcare workers said they were still struggling to access digital systems, and expressed concerns that continued IT difficulties could exacerbate appointment backlogs.

Dr Sarah Jane Cowley, a GP in North London, told the BBC that her practice was still unable to make appointments and see certain test results, describing the situation as “not sustainable for very long”.

Dr Fari Ahmad – a GP based in Wilmslow in Cheshire – told BBC Breakfast: “It’s all going to build up, so there’s going to be a lot more issues later on in the week.”

Among the platforms affected by the outage is EMIS, which many GPs use to manage appointment bookings and patient records – including sending prescriptions to pharmacies.

This meant GPs could not access medical records or give patients the results of recent tests, while any prescriptions had to be filled out on paper. Many surgeries reverted to offering only emergency appointments.

Asif Akram, who manages the White Rose Medical Practice in Barnsley, told the BBC that as of 09:00 BST on Saturday he was still unable to log in to EMIS.

He said he feared that there would be more appointments cancelled if the systems were not fully operational by Monday.

The NHS England spokesman said: “The majority of systems, including the EMIS appointment and patient record system, are now coming back online in most areas, however they are still running slightly slower than usual.”

In a statement, Nick Kaye, chairman of the National Pharmacy Association, said that community pharmacies’ digital systems were “by and large back online” – but that disruption was expected to continue as the outage had caused backlogs in processing prescriptions.

Earlier, his deputy Olivier Picard said pharmacies were facing “continuous problems”, having not been able to receive digital prescription issued after the outage occurred.

Though many IT systems have been restored, other sectors are also facing some ongoing disruption.

More than 70 flights in and out of UK airports have been cancelled as of 16:00 BST on Saturday, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium, as airlines grapple with rebooking travellers during the busiest period of the year for air travel.

Over 300 arrivals and departures were cancelled on Friday after check-in, boarding and security systems were knocked out.

It is unclear how many were as a result of the IT issues.

Transport Secretary Louise Haigh has said train operators’ IT systems are now working as normal, though South Western Railways’ ticket machines are still out of order.

Meanwhile, cyber-security experts including CrowdStrike have warned of online scams looking to capitalise on the chaos by offering bogus software updates that may contain malware.