NHS England London has released the latest data update on the clinical impact of the ransomware cyber attack against pathology services provider Synnovis on Monday 3 June.

The data for the seventh week after the attack (15-21 July) shows that across the two most affected Trusts, King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, 1,122 acute outpatient appointments and 46 elective procedures had to be postponed as a result of the attack.

This means so far 1,608 elective procedures and 8,349 acute outpatient appointments have been postponed at King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust since 3rd June.

Progress on rebuilding systems and increasing capacity

Synnovis has now rebuilt substantial parts of its systems, meaning more of their hospital-based services (core chemistry and haematology services, including coagulation studies) are either now restored or planned to be restored over the coming week.

This will mean that significantly more test orders and results can be received electronically. The new systems are still being tested and capacity will improve gradually as systems are rolled out at each site.

Blood transfusion services will continue to be stabilised over the summer, with full restoration anticipated by early Autumn. This means that, while the progress on routine blood tests is welcome, mutual aid (where health services help each other by taking patients) will continue to be required for planned operations and transplants to minimise the ongoing impact on patients.

Previously announced mutual aid arrangements remain in place for primary care.

Dr Chris Streather, Medical Director for NHS London, said: 

“Synnovis has now rebuilt substantial parts of its IT infrastructure, which is very welcome progress. It will take further time for this to roll out but we will soon start to see faster turnaround times for most routine blood tests.

“I want to thank all staff who continue to work tirelessly in difficult circumstances to make sure our patients receive the care they need. We are not expecting blood transfusion services to be restored until autumn, meaning that there will be a continued impact on planned operations and a need for hospitals to help each other by taking patients where needed.

“Despite the challenges, most services are now working at near-normal levels, including in outpatients, day cases and non-elective care. This means it’s important that patients with booked appointments continue to attend unless they have been contacted to say otherwise.

“We also urge people in London to support the ongoing call for O group blood donors to come forward and help boost stocks to help people needing treatment.’

 

Call for O group donors

NHS Blood and Transplant has written to hospitals across the country today to issue an “Amber Alert” asking them to restrict the use of O type blood to essential cases and use substitutions where clinically safe to do so. Demand for O type blood from hospitals has increased due to both the cyber attack and a reduction in donations, including due to the summer period.

O negative and O positive donors are asked to urgently book and fill appointments at donor centres. People can visit blood.co.uk or call 0300 123 23 23 to book an appointment.

More information is available at: NHS calls national blood shortage amber alert – NHS Blood and Transplant (nhsbt.nhs.uk)

 

Advice for the public

NHS organisations across London continue to work in partnership to ensure people receive the critical and urgent care they need, when they need it. Advice to the public remains:

1. Patients should continue to attend booked appointments unless contacted to say otherwise. Patients will be kept informed about any changes to their treatment by the NHS organisation caring for them. This will be through the usual contact routes including texts, phone calls and letters.
2. People should continue to use NHS 111 through the NHS App, online or on the phone for non-urgent care.
3. Urgent and emergency services continue to be available to those who need emergency care and people should access services in the normal way by dialling 999 in an emergency.

As more detail becomes available through Synnovis’ full investigation, the NHS will continue to provide updates.

A helpline has been set up to support people affected (incident helpline: 0345 8778967).

 

Background
More details on the incident, including a questions and answers section, are available on the NHS England website:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/synnovis-cyber-incident

NHS London impact update based on provisional data reported by trusts and organisations involved. Please note all numbers quoted are drawn from unvalidated management information; these have been provided in the interests of transparency.

Updates will be provided on a weekly basis as the incident continues.

This update covers the week 15 – 21 July 2024.

 

Planned care (day case and inpatient treatments)
Across Guy’s and St Thomas’ and King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trusts there have been:

• 46 elective procedures postponed (compared to 71 cancellations last week).
• 4 of these were cancer treatments (compared to 2 for w/c 8th July)

It is too early to understand the impact on 62-day performance and or Faster Diagnosis Standard for the affected trusts.

 

Transplant impacts
20 organs were diverted for use by other Trusts (compared to 26 last week).

 

Maternity
Across Guy’s and St Thomas’ and King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trusts:

Zero planned C-sections have been postponed/rescheduled in the last week (compared to zero the week before).

 

Outpatients:
Across Guy’s and St Thomas’ and King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trusts there have been:

1,122 hospital outpatient appointments were postponed in the last week (compared to 1,028 for week 8-14 July)

34 community outpatient appointments have been postponed in the last week (compared to 24 last week).

 

Blood tests
South east London pathology services provided this week have increased to 60% of normal capacity.

 

Primary care
Primary care appointments are going ahead as normal, however blood tests are being prioritised for urgent and important cases.

Following the introduction of mutual aid arrangements, under which pathology services are temporarily being supplied to primary care users by other providers, all GP practices now have access to testing services for patients needing results within five working days (ie: critical and urgent tests).

Normal services are operating for histology (a diagnosis and study of the tissues which are used to diagnose infections, cancer and other diseases) and cervical smears.

 

Wider impact
Synnovis provides specialist tests for other hospitals in the country. However, the material service impact remains in south east London. Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust remain in a critical incident, while Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust, Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust, Bromley Healthcare, and primary care services in south east London continues to be significantly impacted and involved in the incident response.