GP practice could not locate panic alarm due to IT system failure

Exclusive A GP practice could not locate the origin of a panic alarm due to an IT systems issue, in a critical incident highlighted by the LMC.

YOR LMC medical secretary Dr Brian McGregor said he was told of a ‘critical incident’ at a practice in the Bradford District and Craven, West Yorkshire.

He said the location of a panic alarm pressed in a surgery could not be identified because its IT systems were in contingency mode due to an IT failure.

He told Pulse: ‘When you log onto SystmOne, it picks up your location from the terminal you are using, but the IT failure and contingency mean this location is no longer accessible.

‘There is an alarm icon on the system, this was activated in a large building and no one knew by whom or where the alarm was activated, so no one knew where to go to provide support’.

A spokesperson for the Bradford District and Craven Health and Care Partnership team said they were ‘aware of the incident referenced’.

It said the incident happened a week prior to an ‘unrelated’ outage last week which forced GP practices in the same area to resort to pen and paper due to an inability to generate pathology forms.

It is not clear whether anyone came to harm as a result of the critical incident.

Meanwhile, the wider IT outage is now resolved but the fallout continues.

The outage was caused by problems with data centres that support IT systems in primary care in the area, causing huge backlogs and ‘severe’ disruption to services.

According to Dr McGregor, Bradford and Craven GP practices were affected by the outage because of their use of ‘dumb terminals’ rather than desktops.

This means that if the main server ‘crashes’, as is believed to have happened when connectivity failed at the data centre that the affected GP practices connect to, contingency measures are limited.

‘My understanding is an update took place last weekend that effectively crashed the main server, the backup server is merely a record of the main server and does not function as a server, so there is no contingency for server failure.’, Dr McGregor said.

Responding, the Bradford District and Craven Health and Care Partnership team said: ‘We will not be commenting further on IT issues while the current review is underway.

‘Once the review is complete, we will share findings through the appropriate channels.’

The partnership announced on Tuesday that GP practices had regained full access to clinical and business systems.

It previously confirmed the incident was not a cyber attack and no patient data was breached.

It said most applications were ‘functioning as expected’ from 7am on Monday with SMS issues resolved overnight on Tuesday.

It said the backlog meant there would not be an ‘immediate return to business as usual for practices’.

‘Practices face the challenge of working through a substantial administrative backlog caused by the outage.

‘We ask for the public’s continued patience and understanding, particularly if you experience longer waits or delays over the coming days.’

A GP who previously spoke to Pulse about the outage, and who wished to remain anonymous, said their practice was spending the week clearing the backlog caused by their inability to send SMS messages last week.

They said they had ‘not heard anything yet about whether there’s going to be any kind of compensation’ for the extra money spent on staff overtime to clear the backlog.

‘We want to ensure that this doesn’t happen again, because this has happened before.

‘What we’re keen to have here is a full explanation for what happened and why it happened’, the GP said.

The partnership said a ‘full review’ into the incident would follow once repairs were completed.

A spokesperson for Bradford District and Craven Health and Care Partnership said: ‘The recent IT disruption affected most GP practices across the area at some stage.

‘All practices remained operational throughout, using business continuity arrangements.

‘Some practices maintained full system access, while others operated in contingency mode with access to patient records and core functions.

‘We recognise that the disruption created additional workload for many teams, although the extent of the impact varied.

‘We are now moving into the recovery and review phase, which will include reviewing intelligence shared by practices and working closely with them to understand the overall impact and identify any lessons learned.

‘We are extremely grateful to general practice colleagues for their professionalism and continued focus on patient care during this period.’

Last month, Suffolk GPs faced thousands of duplicate pathology results following a ‘software failure’ at a hospital trust, which had ‘significant knock-on effects’ on practices.

Pulse has also reported on a flawed IT system rollout which led to delayed blood tests and cancelled GP appointments across Nottinghamshire.