Newcastle pharmacy faces prescription woes over global IT issues

A pharmacy had to turn away patients picking up prescriptions because of a global IT outage.

Harry Pearson, a pharmacist at Parkside Pharmacy in Benton, Newcastle, said staff were earlier unable to download electronic prescriptions that been issued from doctors’ surgeries.

He advised people to go back to their GPs and get a written prescription that “can be processed as normal” if their medication is urgent.

GP surgeries, hospitals and football clubs in the North East and Cumbria have also been affected.

Mr Pearson described how the pharmacy had to go the “long way round” to issue medicines that had been prescribed on Friday.

He later added their IT issues seemed to have been resolved and patients could collect their prescriptions as normal.

The IT issue has affected Microsoft Windows devices all over the world.

Cyber-security firm Crowdstrike has admitted the problem was caused by an update to its Falcon antivirus software, designed to protect Microsoft Windows devices from malicious attacks.

Hospitals in North Cumbria saw more patients seeking emergency or urgent care than usual because of the IT issues.

North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the Cumberland Infirmary and West Cumberland Hospital, said: “Due to global IT issues, our urgent and emergency services are experiencing a higher number of patients.”

About 330 GP practices under the NHS North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board (ICB) were affected by the outage – which was about half of its total GP surgeries.

Dr Caroline Bateman from Distington Surgery in Cumbria said: “It’s just the normal day-to-day stuff that we’re not able to do at the minute.

“It has prevented us gaining access to our record system, so all of our patients notes, and through that system is also where we access things like repeat prescriptions, test requests and so on.”

GP practices and NHS trusts in the region have activated their business continuity plans and put mitigations in place to protect services while work is done to resolve the problem.

This includes using paper patient records, handwriting prescriptions and using phone systems rather than digital bookings, the ICB said.

Dr Neil O’Brien, chief medical officer at the ICB, apologised and asked people to be patient.

He said: “GP practices are still open, but if you don’t need their help urgently, please consider calling your surgery on another day instead.

“If you have a booked appointment, please do attend unless you are told otherwise.”

The ICB added that ambulance services were “busy but there is currently no known impact on 999 or other emergency services”.

Football fans had to hold off buying tickets during the outage.

Sunderland AFC told supporters that its e-ticketing website was unavailable.

A post on its website said: “Fans will be unable to access their e-ticketing account or purchase tickets until this has been resolved.”

The outage affected sales for Sunderland’s pre-season friendly against Olympique de Marseille, with tickets being unavailable on Friday morning.

Middlesbrough FC said it was unable to process card payments over the counters at its ticket offices and online “due to the global IT outage“.

Train operator TransPennine Express (TPE) also warned passengers it had been affected.

“Please purchase tickets on board if you are unable to do so in stations,” it added.

Meanwhile, Newcastle Airport said it was “currently operating as normal” but IT issues had affected some of its business partners.

A statement from the airport said: “We recommend passengers keep in contact with their airlines or view the arrivals/departures board on the airport website for the latest flight information.”