Expect ‘significant delays’ at emergency departments, HSE warns

Emergency departments are "very busy" and there are "significant delays" and disruptions to health services due to last week's ransomware attack, the Health Service Executive (HSE) has warned.

“Please only attend if you need urgent care,” it said in an update on Wednesday night.

Most hospital appointments are going ahead as planned but many x-ray appointments are cancelled.

Most community health services such as disability, mental health, primary care and older people’s services are operating as normal, as are Covid-19 vaccinations and tests. The HSE said there may be some delays in getting Covid-19 test results, however.

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Some screening appointments may be changed this week and online services affected by the cyberattack include medical card applications and GP visit card applications, it added.

There are also delays with issuing birth, death or marriage certificates.

GPs

A Connemara-based GP has told of the difficulties being faced by practices as a result of the cyberattack on the HSE last week.

Dr Peter Sloane told RTÉ radio’s Today with Claire Byrne show that all blood tests had to be cancelled this week for patients that were booked in, which would have included testing for diabetes and cardiovascular conditions.

Practices cannot send referrals, even paper referrals, to hospitals, he added.

Effectively there was no normal business taking place between general practice and the hospital sector, he said.

Consultants that he had contacted had been “suberb” he said, but it was “incredibly frustrating” not to be able to undertake routine investigations.

Dr Sloane said his practice would have to check all referrals that were sent out last week and check if they had been received and processed, while blood tests that were sent out had not been tested, and patients would have to be rebooked.

While the backlog gets bigger and larger and longer, he said, chronic disease was getting pushed out further.

Restoring systems

Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly said it will take “several weeks” to get all the HSE’s IT systems back up and running after the cyberattack.

He told the Dáil on Wednesday that the HSE had to assess and recover 2,000 patient-facing systems, “each supported by infrastructure, multiple servers and devices”, amounting to about 80,000 machines in total.

A methodical process is under way of cleaning and restoring them and managing the risk of reinfection, he said.

Mr Donnelly said the priority for the HSE is patients most in need of urgent care. “In particular, every effort has been made to maintain cancer services at present, with a particular focus on urgent and time-sensitive cases,” he said.

“Unfortunately, radiotherapy services are particularly impacted, medical oncology is continuing with some delay, and plans are being developed to relocate some of these services to the private hospitals on a temporary basis.”

Meanwhile, the HSE has said that health service staff who are due to receive their wages this week will be paid as normal despite the cyberattack on its computer systems.

However, it has warned that “some issues may arise” in relation to payroll next week and that it was continuing to work on potential contingency arrangements.

“This is based on returns submitted last week before the normal payroll closing date before the IT cyberattack arose,” it said.

“Our focus is also on next week’s payroll and we will continue to work on any contingency measures when they become necessary. We anticipate some further issues may arise next week.”

It is understood the HSE expects that staff due to be paid on Thursday will receive the correct amounts due to them.