The ‘majority’ of GP practices across Kent and Medway ICB were unable to access patient records and appointment and telephone systems yesterday after a ‘major IT outage’.
NHS Kent and Medway ICB announced that there was a ‘multi-site network disruption affecting GP practices across multiple regions’, thought to be caused by a ‘connectivity performance problem within a datacentre’.
In its first update, the ICB said: ‘This is adversely impacting GP practices and other connected sites across multiple regions.
‘Reported effects include slow network performance and loss of access to services hosted at the datacentre, including Always On Virtual Private Network (AOVPN).’
Yesterday, the ICB confirmed the disruption was ongoing and there was ‘potential for these to continue’.
NHS South, Central and West (SCW) outlined steps for staff at affected GP practices including printing patient appointment lists in case there were issues.
In a press release addressing the outage, Kent LMC said staff were ‘unable to access patient records, medication histories, appointment systems or telephone systems’.
The LMC added that it had ‘repeatedly raised concerns about the resilience and safety risks’ of GP IT systems in the Kent and Medway ICB area ‘following multiple outages across the region over the past year’.
It predicted the impact of the outage would continue ‘for many days’ after systems are restored ‘as practices work to catch up’.
This story first appeared on our sister title Pulse.
