Supporting unexpected workload peaks
In July 2024, a major, global IT incident prevented people and organisations worldwide from accessing day-to-day IT systems, including both SWGP and our member practices.
Although the impact varied across practices, some were unable to access clinical records or appointment details. This meant clinicians had to rely on manual consultation forms, creating a backlog of information that needed to be added to patient notes. In some cases, some types of appointments also had to be cancelled.
We quickly developed a support offer for our member practices to help them tackle the extra workload and get back to normal as quickly as possible.
We offered member practices a range of free resilience support, totalling:
- 203 administrative hours (at practice level)
- 18 phlebotomy sessions (at PCN level on a fair share basis)
Many practices took up the offer, which led to us providing 158 hours support, broken down as follows:
- Administration – 18.5 hours
- Letter Coding – 13 hours
- Reception – 29 hours
- Secretarial – 42.5 hours
- Phlebotomy – 55 hours
This rapid response was gratefully received by member practices where they did not have the capacity to manage the backlog themselves.
We have also used the experience to strengthen our own business continuity plans to minimise the impact of any future IT outages.