Bolton’s GPs are back up and running following an IT failure which left many surgeries unable to view patient records after an outage which NHS England said affected ‘the majority of GP practices’ across the country.

The outage – a result of a worldwide IT issue which affected airports, railways, and other businesses, also affected cancer appointments at The Christie hospital, with chemotherapy appointments ‘deferred’.

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In a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Monday, the NHS trust behind the hospital said: “The issues affecting our chemo and immunotherapy supplier have now been resolved.

“We saw as many people as possible over the weekend and are catching up on rescheduled treatments this week.

“Unless we contact you, please attend your appointment. Thanks for bearing with us.”

 

 

On Friday, just one GP out of nearly 20 contacted by The Bolton News said it was not affected by the outage – which affected the ‘EMIS’ patient record system.

Surgeries including Tonge Fold Medical Centre, The Oaks Family Practice, Olive Family Practice, and Garnet Fold Surgery were all affected – leaving patients unable to book an appointment and staff unable to view records.

Many GP surgeries were advising patients with non-emergency issues to call 111 or to try calling back on Monday, in the hope the issue will be fixed by then.

Now, Bolton’s GPs are playing catch-up, with a backlog of appointments caused by the disruption. One GP receptionist told The Bolton News it would take at least three days to clear the backlog at their practice.

The British Medical Association (BMA) warned on Sunday that normal GP service “cannot be resumed immediately” after the outage caused a “considerable backlog”.

The trade union for doctors said GPs will “need time to catch up from lost work over the weekend”, adding that NHS England should “make clear to patients” this is the case.

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The BMA said its GP committee will continue to talk to NHS England and patient record system supplier EMIS to secure a “better system of IT back-up” to ensure the “disaster” is not repeated.

A flawed update rolled out by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike was behind the IT failure.

CrowdStrike chief executive George Kurtz said it would take “some time” for systems to be fully restored.

The cybersecurity firm said in a statement on Sunday night that a “significant number” of the around 8.5 million affected Windows devices were now back online and operational.

On social media, Greater Manchester health bosses thanked the public for their patience as issues were resolve.

In a post on X, NHS Greater Manchester said: “Following the recent issues with EMIS, systems are now back online.

“Patients with an NHS appointment this week should continue to attend unless told not to. Thank you to everyone for your patience and support during this time.

“There still may be some delays as services recover.”

An NHS spokesperson said: “Systems are now back online, and patients with an NHS appointment this week should continue to attend unless told not to.

“Thanks to the hard work of NHS staff throughout this incident we are hoping to keep further disruption to a minimum, however there still may be some delays as services recover, particularly with GPs needing to rebook appointments, so please bear with us.

“It’s important that patients attend appointments as normal unless told otherwise. You can contact your GP in the usual way, or use your local pharmacy, NHS 111 online or call 111for urgent health advice.”

If you have a story, I cover the whole borough of Bolton. Please get in touch at jack.fifield@newsquest.co.uk.