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 thirteenth week after the attack (26 August to 1 September), shows that across the two most affected trusts, King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, 25 acute outpatient appointments and two elective procedures had to be postponed because of the attack.

This means so far 10,129 acute outpatient appointments and 1,702 elective procedures have been postponed at King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust.

NHS London Medical Director Chris Streather said: “We continue to see fewer acute outpatient appointments and elective procedures being postponed at Kings College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, which is good news for patients. I would again like to thank patients for their understanding over what has been a difficult few months, as well as all our staff for their hard work and efforts to get services back to near normal levels.

“Our focus is the full restoration of blood transfusion services which remains planned for early autumn, meaning that mutual aid will continue to be required for planned operations and transplants to minimise the ongoing impact on patients until this time.

“The repatriation of testing services for GPs back to Synnovis continues to progress and South East London ICB look forward to repatriating services for all boroughs as soon as possible.”

Call for O group donors continues

Demand for O type blood from hospitals has increased due to both the cyber attack and a reduction in donations. O negative and O positive donors are still 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.

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. 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. 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.
4. Patients waiting on blood tests are advised to keep an eye on Swiftqueue, the online booking service, as more appointments become available.

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). More details on the incident, including a questions and answers section, are also available on the NHS England website: https://www.england.nhs.uk/synnovis-cyber-incident

Background

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.

The update shows that for the week 26 August – 1 September 2024.

The next update will be on Thursday 12 September.

Planned care (day case and inpatient treatments)

Across King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust two elective procedures were postponed (compared to four cancellations in the week beginning 19 August). None of these were cancer treatments.

It is still too early to understand the impact on 62-day performance or the faster diagnosis standard for the affected trusts.

Transplant impacts

No organs were diverted for use by other trusts

Maternity

No c-sections were postponed in the last week

Outpatients

25 outpatient appointments were postponed in the last week (compared to 21 last week)

No community outpatient appointments have been postponed in the last week..

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 and King’s College Hospital 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 continue to be affected and involved in the incident response.