Brighton hospital bosses have issued a fresh plea to patients and the public to use emergency services only when necessary.
The request follows problems with phone and computer systems at the Royal Sussex County Hospital, in Brighton, which started yesterday (Saturday 17 June).
The IT (information technology) problems were blamed on overheating computer servers and led to ambulances being diverted to hospitals in Worthing and Redhill, in Surrey.
University Hospitals Sussex, the NHS trust that runs the Royal Sussex, said that some equipment was up and running again but there was still work to do before everything was back to normal.
At 3pm, the trust said: “Following the discovery of problems with IT and communications systems yesterday evening, we are bringing our clinical and communications systems back into operation.
“However, some are still to be reactivated while others are working intermittently or remain fragile.
“We ask that people continue to use NHS services wisely at this time and only use emergency services when necessary.
“There is still work to do to normalise all of our systems, and our teams may still encounter more challenges than normal throughout the day.
“Your patience and continued support is greatly appreciated.
“We apologise to anyone affected by the disruption this weekend – patients, families, our University Hospitals Sussex colleagues and NHS teams in other organisations.”
Brighton and Hove News alerted patients to the problems last night.
And earlier today the trust said: “We are currently experiencing difficulties with a series of clinical and communications systems across the trust, including hospital phone lines.
“As a result, from Saturday evening ambulances have been diverted away from Royal Sussex County Hospital.
“Staff are working to contingency plans to support the delivery of safe and appropriate care.
“We ask all patients to continue to choose services carefully and appropriately – please support our staff by only dialling 999 if you face a medical emergency.
“We fully appreciate that this situation may have a significant impact not only on our patients and their families and friends but also on staff working extremely hard in both the ambulance service and in neighbouring hospitals.
“The support and co-operation of everyone involved is hugely appreciated.
“We are of course seeking to resolve the problems as quickly as possible, and will provide updates as we can.”
To be fair, only using emergency services when there is an emergency is a message we should be pushing a lot more. Partially, this is to do with the method we triage, and partially due to healthcare options within the community, and of course capacity of our GP surgeries and waiting times.
There are a lot of improvements we can make to the system as a whole to modernise it.