GPs say delays still possible after Crowdstrike IT outage

Dr David Wrigley, deputy chair of the BMA's GPs committee for England has shared that normal service "cannot be resumed immediately".

He also said that Friday was "one of the toughest single days in recent times for GPs" due to the temporary loss of their EMIS patient record system, which meant booking appointments was sometimes not possible.

The IT outage was caused by a faulty update to CrowdStrike antivirus software, which crashed Microsoft systems, BBC News reports.

As CrowdStrike continues to work with customers and partners to resolve this incident, our team has written a technical overview of today’s events. We will continue to update our findings as the investigation progresses. https://t.co/xIDlV7yKVh

— George Kurtz (@George_Kurtz) July 20, 2024

More than eight million computers worldwide were affected, bringing chaos to transport networks and health services.

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said the issue had been fixed on Friday but admitted that it could take "some time" for some computer systems to be restored.

Experts have warned that the process of fixing all the computers will continue into the coming week.

Normal service at GPs will take time to resume

Dr Wrigley shared that over the weekend, GPs were "pulling out all the stops", Sky News reports.

CrowdStrike continues to focus on restoring all systems as soon as possible. Of the approximately 8.5 million Windows devices that were impacted, a significant number are back online and operational.

Together with customers, we tested a new technique to accelerate impacted…

— CrowdStrike (@CrowdStrike) July 21, 2024

He added: "Even if we could guarantee it could be fully fixed on Monday, GPs would still need time to catch up from lost work over the weekend, and NHS England should make clear to patients that normal service cannot be resumed immediately."

Work is beginning on a "better system of IT backup so that this disaster is not repeated in future".

A spokesperson for NHS England said: "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."

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Additionally, they asked patients with appointments this week to attend as normal unless told otherwise.

Though many IT systems have been fixed, other sectors are also facing some ongoing disruption.

Airlines are beginning to resume normal operations, with the number of cancelled flights worldwide reducing on Sunday (July 21) compared to Saturday (July 20).