BMA reports Crowdstrike patient backlog
The British Medical Association (BMA) has warned that there is a “considerable backlog” of patients after 19 July’s Crowdstrike IT outage
In a statement, Dr David Wrigley, Deputy Chair of the BMA’s General Practitioners’ Committee in England (GPC England), said that the IT failure had impacted digital patient record systems.
“Without a clinical IT system, many were forced to return to pen and paper to be able to serve their patients,” he explained. Additionally: “While GPs and their teams worked hard to look after as many as they could, without access to the information they needed, much of the work has had to be shifted into the coming week.”
Consequently, even as their IT systems come back online, the temporary loss of the systems has led to a “considerable backlog”, where GPs will “need time to catch up from lost work”, Wrigley added.
The BMA confirmed that its GPC will continue to talk with both the National Health Service (NHS) and medical software provider EMIS over the coming week to ensure a swift recovery – as well as to secure a better IT backup system to avoid similar incidents.
According to a report by the Times newspaper, systems produced by EMIS are used by over 60% of GP surgeries in England and Wales.
The global IT outage last Friday was caused by a faulty software update by cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike. In addition to affecting healthcare providers, the crash also impacted other heavily computerised industries, such as airlines and airports.