Computer nightmare, normal service now resumed!
On Tuesday and Wednesday of this weekend we had almost a complete IT system failure. The practice is completely paperless and all clinical work and administration tasks are done via our clinical computer system. The practice no longer has a server on site, instead our system uses a remote server and everything is connected to this remote server via a private NHS net broadband connection.
On Tuesday we noticed that the computer system was running slowly. It was taking one to two minutes to load a patient record compared to the ten seconds it takes normally. Not only was it taking the computer ages to load records it also took ages to print prescriptions, look at letters and indeed do anything at all on patients computerised clinical record.
Our IT help desk was called and eventually at 3.30 pm they identified that there was a fault with our NHS net broadband connection. There are two connections, a primary connection at speeds up to 8 Mbps and a back-up one that works at 1 Mbps. The primary connection had failed and we were limping along on the back up connection.
It took BT till 5 pm on Wednesday to correct the fault. We are now back to normal and I apologise to any patients who were inconvenienced by our broadband system failure. I found this extremely frustrating and despite escalating the fault to everyone we could think of (!), nothing happened. We intend to raise this as a significant incident, because if we can't access patients notes we cannot now safely provide a service. Wakefield CCG commissions IT support for general practices and they have an electronic significant incident reporting system. But guess what ...
The system is on the internet ....duh!
On Tuesday we noticed that the computer system was running slowly. It was taking one to two minutes to load a patient record compared to the ten seconds it takes normally. Not only was it taking the computer ages to load records it also took ages to print prescriptions, look at letters and indeed do anything at all on patients computerised clinical record.
Our IT help desk was called and eventually at 3.30 pm they identified that there was a fault with our NHS net broadband connection. There are two connections, a primary connection at speeds up to 8 Mbps and a back-up one that works at 1 Mbps. The primary connection had failed and we were limping along on the back up connection.
It took BT till 5 pm on Wednesday to correct the fault. We are now back to normal and I apologise to any patients who were inconvenienced by our broadband system failure. I found this extremely frustrating and despite escalating the fault to everyone we could think of (!), nothing happened. We intend to raise this as a significant incident, because if we can't access patients notes we cannot now safely provide a service. Wakefield CCG commissions IT support for general practices and they have an electronic significant incident reporting system. But guess what ...
The system is on the internet ....duh!
Comments
Post a Comment