More appointment delays in south east London as NHS cyberattack hits

A further 1,300 outpatient appointments and 205 elective procedures have been postponed due to disruption caused by a cyber attack that has 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 17 and 23 June the two worst affected hospitals, King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, cancelled 1,300 outpatient appointments and 205 elective procedures as a result.

NHS England London reported that since 3 June the number of outpatient visits has increased to 3,396 and the number of planned procedures performed to 1,255.

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 have had to postpone a number of surgeries and appointments. We would like to once again apologize to all patients affected by this situation.

“The staff continue to do a great job in very difficult circumstances and they deserve enormous credit for that.”

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 its darknet site and Telegram channel, including patient names, dates of birth, NHS numbers and blood test descriptions.

In a statement on Monday, NHS England said there was “no evidence” cybercriminals had released the entire database, but it could be “several 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 across general practice” over the past week and that “the impact of the cyberattack has been significant on pathology services”.

“Mutual aid agreements that were put in place to meet urgent demand have been implemented at a rapid pace across all six districts, 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 someone else has informed them of a rescheduled appointment.

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

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

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