I have been informed this afternoon that the Royton & Crompton Family Practice phone and IT systems were down. This is a result of work that was being carried out outside the building by Manchester City Fibre. It has now been confirmed that a cable that connects Royton Health & Wellbeing Centre to Werneth Primary Care Centre has also been cut.

A “P1” critical incident was raised with Greater Manchester Shared Service for Information Technology by the practice as soon as the outage occurred. GMSS has also logged an incident with City Fibre in order to try to repair the cable. They are awaiting a direct update from City Fibre and news on the deployment of an engineer for system tests.

The practice has swiftly implemented its business continuity plan as follows:

Comms / patient engagement

• Phones have been diverted to Go To Doc healthcare for today. Any calls that are taken that require action by the practice are being fed back to the admin team.
• The following message has been placed on the practice website

Urgent Message

There is currently a fault with the practice phone lines and computer systems.

please contact 111 for any urgent medical queries.

Please do not use this online form for urgent or emergency requests.

We aim to respond within 2 working days. For urgent or emergency requests for example suspected urine infections, mental health concerns and children under 5 please contact the surgery on 0161 357 2315.

• A message has also been placed on the “Royton Hub” group on Facebook, which is where a lot of patients share feedback about the practice
• The Patient Participation Group has also been informed

Service Continuity

• The practice is buddying up with Royton Medical Centre, who are helping with access to EMIS (GP It system) and patient lists
• If any urgent referrals are required – e.g. 2 Week Wait – practice secretaries will go over to Royton Medical Centre and ensure that they are processed there
• The practice has tried to use personal hotspots on mobile phones, but this has unfortunately not worked
• Some staff will work from home tomorrow using laptops and access clinical systems remotely
• The practice has spoken to the 3 pharmacies in Royton to brief them on the situation. The pharmacies are aware that hand-written scripts will be used for the time being and have agreed to contact the practice if they are any issues

Next Steps

• An up date is expected tomorrow AM. If required phones will be diverted to Go To Doc tomorrow, if the system is not fixed.
• The practice is intending to continue with all scheduled appointments in order to avoid a backlog.

Thank you to the team at the practice for their swift action and continuing to deliver core services in spite of the issues faced.