GP's urge patients to attend appointments after IT outage.

GP's in Kent are encouraging patients to keep attending their appointments as usual, despite the problems caused by the global IT outage.

Transcript

00:00It is, as you said, 34,000 appointments. That's the average number of appointments that GP

00:06practices deliver in Kent and Medway in one day. And as a result of the global IT outage on Friday,

00:15we have had disruption to an entire day's worth of work. And unfortunately, the disruption

00:22continued into the weekend, with services being restored only late on Sunday night.

00:27So what patients will be experiencing is probably some delays in terms of their

00:32prescription processing. And obviously, at the time on Friday, we were unable to

00:38rebook appointments that had to be cancelled because we couldn't access our system at all.

00:43And so patients will be trying to contact practices to rebook those cancelled appointments this week.

00:49And we all know how busy the phone lines get for the doctors, as it is. And as you mentioned there,

00:54the IT problems, they are solved. That is back online. But it's about these appointments that

01:00have had to be rescheduled. So is that pushing people to the back of the queue, those that

01:04already had appointments booked Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday? Are they all being pushed

01:10back to the back of the queue? What can people expect if they have a doctor's appointment

01:14imminently? So how practices approach this will probably vary from practice to practice.

01:22On Friday, practices will have undertaken a triage process to make sure that patients

01:27with urgent needs will not have just been left trying to get back in touch with their practice.

01:34And what's the advice to patients at the minute if they are waiting on the phone lines even longer

01:38than the usual wait time? It can be at that eight o'clock slot in the morning when we're trying to

01:42call up the doctors. Can people get through at all? What can they expect? What's the advice?

01:48So patients should be able to contact their practice in the usual way now. So I would just,

01:54if you are unable to get through to your practice, just try again and you should be able to get

02:00through now. And what would you like to see done more widely, I suppose, to stop something like

02:05this happening in the future? Are systems going to change now? Will there be a review of some kind to

02:11look at what went so badly wrong and how people can adapt? Of course, it's no secret that we're

02:16adapting. Of course, it's not necessarily anybody's fault that this happened. We still

02:21need to get to the bottom of this IT issue and how it's impacted so many different sectors.

02:25Of course, we've talked a lot about airlines as well as GPs too. So what's the change, I suppose,

02:32that GPs will need to make? What are their conversations about how they'll adapt for the

02:36future? Yeah, I think as you alluded to, this has highlighted system problems across the world.

02:46This was a global IT outage that nobody could have anticipated, but it has really highlighted

02:52how vulnerable certain parts of certainly healthcare, general practice are. The computer

02:59systems in GP surgeries are decided by NHS England and GP surgeries do not have direct control

03:08over which computer systems they use. And so we have been asking for some conversations to be had

03:16and we know that the BMA, who are our union representative, are having some of these

03:22conversations with NHS England to discuss how we improve the resilience of the system so that

03:28something like this doesn't happen again. And there's a plea to those booking appointments

03:33or trying to rebook those appointments to be patient with healthcare professionals.

03:39Have there been people on the phones frustrated?

03:43I think whenever something like this happens, frustrations can occur.

03:48And, you know, that's understandable. As I said, it's out of our control,

03:51but we're really sorry for the disruption that patients will be experiencing.

03:57Caroline, thank you very much for your time today.