More delays to appointments and procedures following cyber attack on NHS – The Irish News

A further 1,300 outpatient appointments and 205 elective procedures were postponed due to disruption caused by the cyber attack that hit a number of London hospitals.

Pathology services provider Synnovis fell victim to a ransomware attack by Russian cyber gang Qilin in early June.

New figures show that between June 17 and 23, the two worst-affected hospitals, King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, canceled 1,300 outpatient appointments and 205 elective procedures as a result.

This gives a total of 3,396 outpatient visits and 1,255 elective procedures since June 3, says NHS England London.

In a joint statement, Julie Lowe, deputy chief executive of King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, and Dr Simon Steddon, medical director of Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, added: “We continue to treat the cyberattack as a critical incident across both sites and have also put in place measures to limit disruption to patients resulting from the strike this week and next.

“We are forced to postpone a number of surgeries and visits. We would like to apologize once again to all patients affected by this situation.

“Employees continue to do excellent work in very difficult conditions, for which they deserve great credit.”

Earlier this week, NHS England confirmed that data stolen in the attack had been published online.

According to the BBC, Qilin shared almost 400GB of data on his darknet site and Telegram channel, including patient names, dates of birth, NHS numbers and descriptions of blood tests.

In a statement on Monday, NHS England said there was “no evidence” that cybercriminals had published the entire database, but it could be “a number of weeks” before we know which people were affected by the attack.

Dr Chris Streather, medical director of NHS London, said the service had “started to see real progress in general practice” last week, saying the “impact of the cyberattack on pathology services has been significant”.

“Mutual aid arrangements put in place to meet urgent demand have been implemented rapidly across all six boroughs, with pathology services now able to operate at 45% of the capacity they had prior to the cyberattack,” he added.

“This allows us to increase the number of blood tests available for the most critical and urgent cases.

“It is important that patients who already have appointments continue to attend their appointments unless they have been notified by someone else that their appointment has been rescheduled.

“We apologise again to anyone affected by this and staff are working hard to reschedule affected appointments and treatments as quickly as possible.

“We continue to experience disruption to services at King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust.

“I would like to thank all the trust staff who are working tirelessly to provide care and support to patients affected by this incident.”