More than 9,000 hospital letters have been delayed in Kent due to an IT problem

More than 9,000 automated letters from hospitals to GPs in Kent were delayed by three weeks due to an error that occurred during an IT upgrade at Kent Community Health Foundation Trust.

The deferred letters, dated October 31, 2024, include as many as 900 letters that the trust has identified as requiring urgent follow-up.

Pauline Butterworth, Deputy CEO and Chief Operating Officer at Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust, said Digital health news: “We would like to apologize to our patients and fellow GPs for any inconvenience caused by the IT problems.

“No patient harm was identified as a result of the IT outage, which caused a delay in sending letters to GP practices.

“The number of letters over the three weeks was 9,325. Of these cases, fewer than 900 were immediately identified as requiring urgent follow-up.

“Our services processed these letters as a priority and many had already emailed the practices directly if they had an urgent request for their patient.

“This only affected letters sent to practices, but not letters sent to patients, many of whom advocated on their own behalf by contacting their GP.”

Pulse reported that GPs in Kent were asked to review the letters to identify crucial information and urgent patient actions, such as medication reviews and death verifications.

In a message to practices, the trust said: “This may mean that the information you have received about some of your patients may not reflect the current progress of their care or health needs.

“You may also receive more letters in one day than you would normally expect from us.

“Although there was a delay in sending the letters, they will all be correctly dated to the day the doctor originally generated them.

“Please check any letters received from Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust on Tuesday 29 October for urgent information such as urgent requests, medication reviews and death verifications.”

The IT problem follows an EMIS outage on November 4, 2024, which caused ‘chaos’ for GPs in England when access to appointment booking systems and patient records was cut off at the busiest time of the week.

Meanwhile, in a report on the prevention of future deaths, published on August 23, 2024, a coroner warned the Department of Health and Social Care and SSP Health to take action to improve electronic triage systems for GPs, following the death of a patient following an email from his father. There was no response to the GP practice for three days.

In July 2024, the Health Services Safety Investigations Body published a report on its research, which found that patient safety incidents relating to the use of online consultation tools by GPs were under-reported.