NHS issues new warning to patients after Microsoft’s global IT outage

Patients were warned that the problems that affected appointments and operations on Friday could still cause delays. The alert comes three days after GP practices across the country were severely affected following a significant IT failure.

A ‘flawed’ antivirus update has left ‘most’ GP practices with problems accessing computer information. It also hit people across the globe, including travelers, as trains, airports and airlines were all affected, with many facing long delays.

Now the NHS has issued a statement warning that while the problem is being resolved, there could still be further delays in resuming services. An NHS England spokesman 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 during this incident, we hope to keep further disruption to a minimum. However, there may still be some delays as services recover, particularly if GPs need to change their appointments, so please bear with us.

“It is important that patients show up for appointments as usual, unless otherwise told. You can contact your GP as usual or use your local pharmacy, NHS 111 online or call 111 for urgent health advice.”

On Friday, the NHS confirmed that GP patients had been affected by problems affecting parts of Microsoft’s network. It said the incident affected the EMIS program and the patient record system, resulting in “seeking disruption in most GP practices”.

Practices had to revert to paper records. They also had to issue handwritten prescriptions.

Cyber ​​security software firm CrowdStrike said at the time that it was not “a cyber attack”. It said it identified the source of the problem to be associated with an antivirus update.