NHS 111 cyber attack still affecting GPs three weeks after start of outage

GPs are still being affected by the recent cyber incident affecting NHS 111, despite assurances a solution was ‘days’ away two weeks ago.

One GP practice was told their CPR training was being cancelled due to 111 ‘capacity issues’ with the IT outage, which affects the Adastra system used by 111 services and hosted by Advanced.

And NHS England has said that software being taken offline is impacting 111 referrals to GP practices and through GP access hubs.

Advanced told Pulse that ‘a number of customers’ have recently reconnected to services, with GP out-of-hours services next in line.

First highlighted by Pulse, parts of the NHS 111 service suffered a ‘total system outage’ three weeks ago, following a ransomware attack.

Two weeks ago, NHS 111 system host Advanced said that for 111 and other urgent care customers, the process to bring services ‘back online’ would begin ‘within the next few days’.

But Nottingham GP partner Dr Irfan Malik yesterday tweeted that his practice had been ‘told our PLT (Protected Learning Time) session for September is being cancelled due to 111 issues with Adastra IT outage’.

He added that 111 services were having ‘capacity issues’, but that he had CPR training ‘booked for the whole practice’.

Dr Malik later tweeted that the issue had been resolved.

Meanwhile, NHS England’s latest GP bulletin – published last week – said that work is ‘continuing to restore services in a safe and managed way’ following the cyber incident.

It said: ‘The software that has been taken offline is used by a number of NHS services, including NHS 111, and is impacting 111 referrals to GP practices, through GP access hubs, pharmacy and dental as well as mental health services.’

Advanced’s update saying the process to bring 111 services ‘back online’ would begin within ‘days’, published on 10 August, is no longer available on its website.

It was revealed at the time that GPs working in urgent care were having to share patient records on Word documents with the fallout from the cyber attack ongoing.

A spokesperson for Advanced said: ‘The NHS England EPRR incident management team has now communicated its findings based on evidence from our internal security assurance activity. NHS 111 customers are therefore beginning to reconnect to Adastra in line with the process set out by NHS England.

‘At present we have a number of customers who have successfully reconnected [including the London and South Central Ambulance Services] with Adastra [out-of-hours] providers following.’

First revealed by Pulse, the 111 outage meant GPs in London were warned they could see an influx of patients signposted from the service.