Patients are being diverted away from the Royal Sussex County Hospital, in Brighton, after a computer systems failure.
The IT (information technology) failure has also affected the Princess Royal Hospital (PRH), in Haywards Heath.
A Facebook post this evening (Saturday 17 June) said: “Just to let you know A&E at Princess Royal Hospital and at Royal Sussex County Hospital are currently both shut due to a big IT issue.
“Patients diverted to Worthing or East Surrey (Redhill). If anyone needs to go tonight worth calling ahead to see if they have reopened.”
Some comments questioned the need for IT, with one commenter asking: “Since when do doctors and nurses need a computer to see patients?”
One of those replying said: “They will have no access to patients medical records, history allergies and contraindications to your current drugs / medications to start with.
“They cannot perform diagnostics – heart machines, X-ray equipment, laboratories, dispensing of medication – prescriptions / dispensing labels to name a few issues.
“As ridiculous as it may seem … consider how frustrating it is for the doctors and nurses who are trying their best.
“They know only two well the impact this will have and it’s totally out of their hands.”
Another said that medics needed IT systems for many of the things that were critical to safe patient care.
Both the Royal Sussex and the PRH are run by University Hospitals Sussex NHS Trust.
Several hours after the IT failure prompted the first diversions, the trust had not posted any information about it on social media.
Yesterday, the South East Coast Ambulance Service tweeted: “You can really help us this weekend by only calling 999 for genuine emergencies.”
You can really help us this weekend by:
📞Only calling 999 for genuine emergencies
💻Making use of NHS 111 Online – https://t.co/ljoQEUQfBn for help and advice
💊Seeking advice from a pharmacist
☀️Keeping cool in the sun
🥤Staying hydrated
🙏Please #HelpUsHelpYou pic.twitter.com/yK1e5cwMLb— South East Coast Ambulance (@SECAmbulance) June 16, 2023
It was a fire in the building somewhere I was in hospital while this was going on can I please say the staff in a&e were amazing it’s was a stressful time for then not only did they remain calm and professional they were assuring everyone else keep up with the good work a&e staff x
Fire is pretty low down on the standard chaos level for the hospital, to be fair! Unshakeable professionals, through and through!
I expect an ageing underfunded IT system is to blame..
IT isn’t only for medical equipment, IT is also vital for building safety, with ventilation, alarm, door locks, lighting and smoke ventilation systems all managed from a central building management system (BMS) computer. When BMS disabled, ventilation for infection control isn’t controlled, and ventilation and lighting responses for a fire incident would not happen
Without BMS computer functioning, the building becomes a death trap with the building safety systems unable to respond to incidents and infections no longer controlled by positive pressure ventilation systems. IT is crucial to building safety over and above medical needs for IT
Whatever gremlin infected the hospital IT systems caused a dangerous situation where the trust considered the danger of longer travel times to other hospitals to be safer than the gremlin afflicted hospital
One of my responsibilities for construction of this NHS hospital was coordinating compliance, which is why I was at the new hospital during early stage construction 2019-2020