IT outage update: NPA urges patience as pharamcy services face delays

Services including accessing prescriptions from GPs and medicine deliveries were disrupted due to global IT outages last week 

The National Pharmacy Association (NPA) has provided an update on the ongoing recovery efforts following last week's IT outage, which affected community pharmacies across the UK.

Nick Kaye, Chair of the NPA, has urged patients to be patient with their local pharmacy teams as service in some community pharmacies may be slower than usual today.

"As pharmacists recover from last week's IT outage and catch up on the backlog of prescriptions, we expect service in some community pharmacies to be slower than usual today.

"Please be patient with your local pharmacy team if you are visiting them, as they may still be prioritising emergency prescriptions from their local GP surgeries as well as experiencing increased demand as services return to normal.”

Kaye commended the resilience and dedication of community pharmacists amid the challenges. "As ever, community pharmacies have worked hard to provide support for those who need them during this period," he noted.

Providing an update on the IT outage recovery, an NHS spokesperson also confirmed that systems are now back online and encouraged patients with scheduled NHS appointments to attend as planned unless they receive specific instructions not to.

The spokesperson acknowledged the efforts of NHS staff in managing the incident and minimising further disruptions. "Thanks to the hard work of NHS staff throughout this incident we are hoping to keep further disruption to a minimum, however there still may be some delays as services recover, particularly with GPs needing to rebook appointments, so please bear with us," they said.

A massive global technology outage on Friday disrupted essential services, including healthcare, airlines, banks, and broadcasters worldwide.

The outage, attributed to a flawed update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, also affected the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK, with several hospitals and GP practices losing access to their computer systems.

Community pharmacies have been facing significant disruptions as services such as accessing prescriptions from GPs and medicine deliveries were affected, causing inconvenience to patients and healthcare providers.

An NHS spokesperson said: “The NHS is aware of a global IT outage and an issue with EMIS, an appointment and patient record system, which is causing disruption in the majority of GP practices.”

The spokesperson assured that the NHS has long-standing measures in place to manage such disruptions, including the use of paper patient records and handwritten prescriptions, and the usual phone systems to contact GPs.

“There is currently no known impact on 999 or emergency services,” said the spokesperson, urging people to continue using these services as they normally would.

Patients are advised to attend appointments unless told otherwise, and only contact GPs for urgent matters, recommending the use of 111 online or calling 111 for other concerns.

The National Pharmacy Association (NPA) acknowledged that global IT outages have disrupted services in some community pharmacies, including accessing prescriptions from GPs and medicine deliveries.

A spokesperson for the National Pharmacy Association (NPA) said that they are urgently raising this issue with NHS England and urged patients to be patient when visiting their pharmacies.

Cause of the global IT outage  

The global outage affecting Microsoft Windows computers has been attributed to CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm whose software is widely used across various industries worldwide to protect against hackers and external breaches.

Independent cybersecurity researcher and consultant Lukasz Olejnik told The New York Times that the problem may have been caused by a flawed security update of CrowdStrike software called Falcon Sensor.

According to Olejnik, an updated fix has been issued, but it remains unclear how long it will take to fully resolve the problem.