Shropshire patients urged to use alternatives to A&E following cyber-attack

Health leaders in Shropshire are asking people with minor illnesses and injuries to use alternatives to A&E, to ease pressures as hospitals recover from the national cyber-attack affecting NHS IT systems and other organisations worldwide.

Shropshire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) say that although all clinical systems are now back online, people are advised to access all NHS services wisely to allow the local system to focus on those people with serious conditions, who need to be seen urgently, as organisations return to normal working. It will also prevent patients with non-critical illnesses from having long waits before they can be treated.

There a range of alternative services available across Shropshire for non-critical conditions, including GPs, Shropdoc, Minor Injuries Units, walk-in centres and pharmacies. However, the public are again being asked to give consideration to accessing health services over the next 48 hours to allow services to stabilise.

Dr Julian Povey, Chair at NHS Shropshire CCG, said:

“As our hospital's return to normal following the incident which affected IT systems, I'd urge people to only go to A&E if they have a serious, life-threatening condition. This will help relieve the pressure.

Other services available include Shropdoc on 0333 222 66 55, walk-in-centres, minor injuries units and pharmacists.

By doing this, patients will help us, but also themselves by getting treated in the right place at the right time, which can ultimately be a quicker route to treatment.”

Sara Biffen, Deputy Chief Operating Officer at The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust, said:

“As has been widely reported, on Friday a large number of NHS Trusts were affected by a computer virus that was contained in an email attachment. Unfortunately, the virus was detected on a small number of machines at SaTH.

“As a precautionary measure, some of the Trust’s systems were suspended briefly in order to reduce any further risk. All of our systems, except for email, are available again.

“Our IT department worked tirelessly to minimise the impact of the virus and to ensure all of our systems were safe to use. No data or information has been lost or compromised.

“A very small number of MRI and CT scanning appointments were cancelled as a precaution whilst systems were down. All other clinics and departments were running over the weekend, although patients may have experienced delays whilst systems were temporarily unavailable. We apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused.

“Services are running as normal today and patients who are due to have appointments at SaTH are asked to attend as normal unless they hear otherwise.

“Our staff were fantastic and responded well to ensure our patients continued to receive the best care possible and I’d like to thank everyone for their efforts over the weekend and our patients for their understanding.”

South Staffordshire and Shropshire NHS Foundation Trust were also affected.

A spokesperson said: "We think our health informatics service detected the issues at the early stage and shut down relevant systems rapidly. We practice for these type of eventualities on a regular basis and were able to quickly initiate our business continuity process, under our silver command lead. We are now gradually introducing IT services and monitoring performance.

"Service users are advised that our normal numbers for crisis and home treatment are in operation, so there should not be an issue of contacting our clinical staff. Appointment schedules are running as normal so please attend any appointments unless you have been notified otherwise. Finally we must pay tribute to our Information Technology and Health Informatic support staff, who have been nothing short of outstanding in responding to this crisis."