NHS warns of ‘delays’ as services recover from CrowdStrike IT outage

The deputy chairman of GPC England, the representative body for GPs at the BMA, said: “Friday was one of the toughest single days in recent times for GPs across England. Credit: PA Images

NHS England has warned of “delays” as services recover from Friday’s global IT outage.

The health service said patients with appointments this week “should continue to attend unless told not to”.

It comes after the British Medical Association (BMA) warned on Sunday that normal GP service “cannot be resumed immediately” after the outage caused a “considerable backlog”.

The trade union for doctors said GPs would “need time to catch up from lost work over the weekend”, adding that NHS England should “make clear to patients” this was the case.

The BMA said its GP committee would continue to talk to NHS England and patient record system supplier EMIS to secure a “better system of IT back-up” to ensure the “disaster” was not repeated.

A flawed update rolled out by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike knocked many services offline around the world on Friday, causing flight and train cancellations and crippling some healthcare systems.

A fix was deployed for a bug in the update, which affected equipment running the Microsoft Windows operating system, as CrowdStrike’s chief executive George Kurtz said it would take “some time” for systems to be fully restored.

Across England, GP surgeries reported being unable to book appointments or access patient records on Friday as their system went down.

An NHS spokesperson said: “Systems are now back online, and patients with an NHS appointment this week should continue to attend unless told not to.

“Thanks to the hard work of NHS staff throughout this incident we are hoping to keep further disruption to a minimum, however there still may be some delays as services recover, particularly with GPs needing to rebook appointments, so please bear with us.

“It’s important that patients attend appointments as normal unless told otherwise. You can contact your GP in the usual way, or use your local pharmacy, NHS 111 online or call 111 for urgent health advice.”

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