Patients who logged on to a practice’s self-service terminal for appointments found that their names had been changed to characters from the Harry Potter books, such as ‘Mrs. Hermione Granger’ and ‘Mr. Ron Weasley’, following a computer error.
The City Walls Practice in Chester said that patients signing in for their appointments were greeted with the test screen, which carried the fictional names.
A statement from the surgery said: ‘We have been informed that when a patient signed in for their appointment, the booking-in system’s test screen was displayed and not their appointment details.’
It continued: ‘We apologise for this glitch in our system and we have notified the provider of this so that it will not happen again. We can reassure all our patients that this technological fault did not compromise patient data or safety.’
Rachel Flint, the reporter from the Chester Chronicle, the paper that first reported on the error, tweeted: ‘Beyond funny – some sort of Harry Potter virus has taken over the self check in machine at City Walls…’.
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