Leeds hospitals IT problems could last until next week

The NHS Trust has had to postpone appointments and surgery because of problems with its pathology IT system.

Some patients visiting their GP for blood tests were also affected and the Trust was also left unable to report on some patients’ test results.

So far 101 procedures have had to be postponed as result of the problems but urgent, emergency and cancer procedures have continued, the Trust said.

It added that improvements are due early next week and it is “extremely sorry”.

Because the Trust has been asking clinicians to prioritise only urgent and emergency requests, there are now around 8,000-10,000 blood tests in the system which are being worked through.

That is the number it would normally expect to carry out in 24 hours. The Trust said it is starting to reduced that number now that it has cleared all urgent requests.

Pathology services that are affected by the issue are blood bank and transfusion, haematology, biochemistry and microbiology.

Suzanne Hinchliffe, Chief Nurse and Deputy Chief Executive at Leeds Teaching Hospitals said: “We are making good progress in tackling the serious issues affecting our ability to deliver a full pathology service.

“The situation is challenging but improving and we expect to be able to report improvement early next week after we have tested the work undertaken with our external partners to restore our system.

“Currently, we are working with our GP colleagues, asking them to prioritise urgent tests and the plan is that from Tuesday next week GPs will be able to request routine blood tests using other providers as a contingency measure until we are back up and running.