Last week’s Microsoft outage demonstrated again the value of community pharmacy to the NHS in maintaining services under exceptional circumstances, as well as those day-to-day, leading pharmacists have said.
The ability of pharmacies on Friday (13) to “keep the show on the road” as part of the NHS response was “a Covid lesson revisited”, commented Ade Williams of Bedminster Pharmacy in Bristol.
“The disruption has added to the workload of community pharmacy but has greatly underlined why we are not just a critical NHS providers but key national healthcare infrastructure,” he said.
“Workarounds, continuity plans deployment and innovative work practices plus extra working hours and tasks prioritising our patients has ‘kept the /show on the road’ supporting not only our patients but many unable to access care at other disrupted services.”
The situation at the end of last week also reinforced that investment is needed in community pharmacy to maintain the strength of the service, he added.
“One key lesson alongside, the reminder of the sectors unique strength and offer, is the need to prioritise us for allocated government spending on national IT resilience and contingency, alongside ensuring we now have easy to deploy protocols and legal frameworks to support population health needs at times of emergencies and disruption.
“Some would say, ‘Nothing stops Community Pharmacy delivering except inadequate funding,’ but considering the return on investment, today again demonstrates, that excellent and much needed value for the NHS. A Covid lesson revisited, one that should never be forgotten in the first place,” said Williams.
Microsoft said the global outage on Thursday (12) and Friday (13) is now resolved.
Dealing with difficulties for patients
Also speaking to Pharmacy Business, Tas Bhatti of the Independent Pharmacy Contractors Network (IPCN) said that community pharmacies had a key role in problem solving while various areas of the NHS were impacted.
“The Microsoft outage has once again highlighted just how dependent community pharmacy and the wider NHS have become on digital infrastructure, and the challenges that arise when those systems fail,” he said.
“One of the biggest concerns has been the disruption to NHSmail and referral pathways. Patients requiring urgent supplies of their regular medication have struggled to access the usual referral arrangements, while minor illness referrals under Pharmacy First have also been affected.
“This has created unnecessary difficulties for patients who would ordinarily expect to access these services through their local community pharmacy.”
Pharmacies always have a key role in supporting patients, sorting out problems and communicating with other healthcare providers, when there are system issues, he said.
“Pharmacists will always do their best to support patients, particularly where urgent medication is required. However, this becomes increasingly difficult when the NHS systems designed to facilitate that care are unavailable," he added.
The impact of the outage may continue for a few days, Bhatti said.
“As for the coming weekend and next week, much will depend on the restoration and stability of affected systems. Even after services resume, there may be additional work in dealing with outstanding communications, delayed referrals and records requiring follow-up.”
Fragility of digital infrastructure
Conor Price, chief executive officer for Community Pharmacy London, commented that the incident showed the importance of contingency planning, and awareness of dependence on a relatively small number of digital platforms.
“Beyond the immediate disruption, the bigger issue for me is what this highlights about the fragility of our digital infrastructure and our dependence on a small number of platforms.
“As more NHS and community pharmacy services become digitally connected, we need to understand where those dependencies create single points of failure. Having several different systems offers limited protection if they all rely on the same underlying infrastructure,” he said.
He added: “For me, the key question is whether services can continue to operate safely when a major platform becomes unavailable. That means having practical, tested alternatives for communication, access to essential information and coordination of care. Those arrangements also need to account for the additional workload and recovery work that falls on teams.
“Digital transformation is essential, but resilience needs to be designed into it from the outset. We should be asking suppliers and commissioners how services will continue during an outage, alongside what the technology can deliver when everything is working.”
The global Microsoft outage affected some digital systems used by pharmacies and GP practices that rely on Microsoft technology. Some GP practices couldn’t send or receive email or use some online consultation tools. Rachel Harrison, national secretary of the GMB union, said there was a “serious impact” on ambulance and NHS trusts. NHS 111 and 999 staff were not able to pass on patient details as normal, which built up a large backlog.
Microsoft has said that the cause was technical, but “not related to cyber or AI/agents”. It traced the issue to a problem from an earlier network capacity upgrade that showed up after a recent network change, and it found “no evidence of malicious activity.”
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