IT failure causes major disruption at Mid Yorks Hospitals

A network hardware failure has caused major disruption to hit The Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust.

On Monday, 11 September, a three-hour network outage caused delays and postponements across the trust, with the A&E department also being affected.

The incident lasted between midday and 3pm, and affected IT networks and the telephone system.  The problems caused delays to patients in the emergency department, within patient discharges delayed.

“The immediate cause of the IT issues has been a failure in a key piece of IT network hardware”, Martin Barkley, trust chief executive said in a statement.

The trust declined to say which network hardware was affected, or provide further details about the nature of the problem.

The Mid Yorkshire has, however, ruled out malware or a cyber attack as possible causes for the network failure, but do not yet know why the piece of hardware failed.

“It has been isolated from the network and diagnostics have commenced to fully understand why it failed”, Barkley said.

Barkley said the IT problem “caused major disruption, delays and in some cases the postponement of appointments for patients across all areas, from outpatients to theatres”.

“We are now focussed on addressing the backlog of patients waiting to be seen”, said Barkley. “I am extremely sorry for the inconvenience caused to many patients and their families.”

Mid Yorkshire provides acute and community health services to about half a million people living in the Wakefield and North Kirklees districts of West Yorkshire.

It is part of the Wakefield local digital roadmap (LDR), and the draft version of the document, said it is absolutely critical that Mid Yorkshire needs a new electronic patient record.

“Without this step it will be difficult to make significant change in the district”, the LDR says.