Critical incident status stood down at Uni Hospitals Sussex after IT outage

University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust is no longer in critical incident, after good progress was made overnight in restoring IT systems.

The trust declared a critical incident yesterday evening (14 January) at 10pm after both the Royal Sussex County and Princess Royal hospitals were significantly affected by problems with IT and phone systems.

Ambulances were forced to divert and patients with patients being taken by the ambulance service to alternative hospitals to meet their needs.

Speaking to BBC Radio Sussex, the chief medical officer at the trust, Professor Katie Urch, said the “very dramatic” incident was caused by a power outage in an IT room housed at Princess Royal hospital in Haywards Heath.

She said it took down all IT systems temporarily shut down all IT systems at both hospital sites at around 6pm.

The trust also instructed the general public not to attend A&E unless it was a lifesaving emergency. At 11.30pm last night the trust confirmed that progress had been made in restoring IT systems since the first update, but that despite the improved situation it was still an ongoing issue.

The latest update at 9am this morning (15 Jan) was that the trust is no longer in critical incident and anyone with a planned appointment should attend as normal unless they are contacted by staff.

The update continued: “Our Emergency Departments are receiving patients as normal, but please be aware that all teams are under additional pressure after the disruption over the weekend – if your health problem is not an emergency, or life-threatening, please visit 111.nhs.uk or call 111 for help or advice.

“Once again, we would like to say thank you to everyone who has responded so brilliantly – our colleagues in IT and Facilities and Estates, our clinical teams, the South East Coast Ambulance Service, and other NHS trusts and partners.”

University Hospitals Sussex is not the only trust to experience issues with its IT systems following a power outage. The same happened back in early November at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust (NUH).