Health chiefs say some GP practices in West Essex and East Herts still affected by global IT outage

Some GP practices in West Essex and East Herts continue to be affected by the IT outage that caused chaos across the world on Friday.

Hertfordshire and West Essex Integrated Care Board issued a statement on Monday (July 22) saying while the software update had been rectified a “handful of GP practices” were still affected.

Clinical systems were being restored at these practices, but regaining full access to patient records and appointment information would take some time.

Work was being carried out at individual practices by the software provider to ensure clinical systems were up and stable. The affected practices were open, but were still working in very difficult circumstances and might not be able to make appointments or offer consultations in the usual way.

A notice to patients of Peacock Surgery, Castle Maltings, Stansted Mountfitchet, on Monday said its clinical system was working and parts of the system needed to facilitate patient care seemed operational.

But it added there was “still some uncertainty about third party applications that integrates with our clinical system” such as ECG/Spirometry software and NHS 111. There were also some issues around Patient Access and the NHS App.

The surgery said Mondays were always busy, but “tomorrow [Tuesday], and to a certain extent… the entire upcoming week, will be super busy”.

Cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike blamed a “defect” in one of its software updates which hit Windows operating systems for the worldwide chaos, rather than a cyberattack or a security incident.

The Indie reported on Friday that most of the GP practices in south west Hertfordshire, and a handful of the GP practices in east and north Hertfordshire and west Essex were affected.