IT incident update – Tuesday 16 October

October 16, 2018

Dear colleagues

Thank you for your cooperation during the IT issues we are experiencing.

The informatics team are working closely with external experts on the recovery plans with work planned this week that we expect to improve the situation.

We also experienced an interruption yesterday with the network connection at Sandwell that affected systems at Sandwell, Rowley and the Lyng including email and internet access. We have now moved to a secondary connection that has restored functionality.

The Emergency Departments, outpatient clinics and transport are continuing to treat patient safely, using their business continuity processes and we have had no need to cancel any planned appointments or procedures. All colleagues are asked to ensure that the E-outcome and EDTA (Electronic Decision to Admit) forms are filled out as completely as possible for each patient who attends a clinic appointment. This is essential to ensure that each patient has their next outcome recorded and their ongoing care planned appropriately.

Please make sure that you continue to report any IT issues to the Helpdesk on ext.4050 or via the Connect portal. We need to make sure we capture all IT problems so that we can identify if there is any further failure affecting our ability to deliver patient care and carry out our essential work.

Thank you for your hard work. We recognise the frustrations that are caused by this incident and will share a further update shortly.

Best wishes

Rachel Barlow