Synnovis staff to strike following ‘alarming impact’ of cyber attack

Laboratory staff working for the NHS pathology supplier hit by a cyber attack which disrupted services across south east London, have announced plans to strike for five days.

Trade union Unite said in a press release, published on 4 December 2024, that more than 500 of its members who work for the Synnovis laboratory have voted to take industrial action between 16 and 20 December 2024.

Synnovis, which is part of SynLab, was hit by a ransomware attack in June 2024, which left patients in south east London unable to get blood tests from their GPs for more than three months.

Unite said that the cyber attack had “an alarming impact on staff who have been forced to work additional hours and without access to essential computer systems for months while the attack has been dealt with”.

Synnovis has a 15 year contract to run the pathology services for King’s College NHS Foundation Trust and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust.

The cyber attack led to 10,152 outpatient appointments and 1,710 elective procedures being postponed at the two trusts, causing at least five cases of moderate patient harm.

A Synnovis worker, who wished to remain anonymous, told Digital Health News: “It goes without saying that staff were under huge physical and mental pressure.

“Where in business as usual, our laboratory information management system will do all the safety checks against reference ranges and previous sets of results and ABO compatibility in case of issuing blood products, we had to have our 100% concentration on manual entry.

“We knew any mistake could result in patients’ harm (particularly in blood transfusion), therefore, we were extremely careful on the manual processing that continued for almost four months.

“This prolonged period of intense work (in many cases without proper rest periods) took its toll on staff wellbeing.”

Unite says that pathology staff also object to how Synnovis has treated them during a restructure and claims there have been “threats of redundancy, downgrading and unsafe staffing levels”.

Sharon Graham, Unite general secretary, said: “Synnovis, who have won a lucrative, long-term outsourcing contract with the NHS, are now riding roughshod over the wishes of its staff.

“Having exhausted all avenues open to them, they have been left with little choice but to ballot for industrial action.”

Laboratory staff object to a planned move to a new hub at Blackfriars, which Unite says will leave “skeletal essential services at each of the hospitals” and “lead to a deterioration of pathology services across London” which would put patients at risk.

A spokesperson for Synnovis told Digital Health News that they were “deeply disappointed” about the industrial action”, following an agreement in September 2024 which it says Unite members voted to accept.

“We have remained committed to this agreement and have made significant positive progress on all points outlined in the agreement.

“We are now working with our NHS trust partners to enact our business continuity plans and ensure the most urgent testing needs are met throughout this period of strike.

“As ever, patient safety is our absolute priority,” the spokesperson said.

They added that Synnovis is in the process of communicating the plans to the GPs and other healthcare organisations that it works with and will keep them updated.

“We are grateful for the partnership we have with these organisations and for how they will work with us throughout what we hope will be a short period of minimal disruption.

“Ultimately, we want to avoid the industrial action and continue to provide essential pathology services for patients in south east London, and we will continue to engage with Unite to that aim,” they said.

This story was updated at 9.10am on 5 December to add a comment provided by a Synnovis worker.