Staff have been praised for their actions during a serious systems failure that took place at St Mary’s Hospital in Newport earlier this week.
A failure of the uninterruptable power supply (UPS) to the computer servers meant that on Tuesday night, for 90 minutes, the telephone and IT systems were down.
The power outage at 11.15pm was such that it blew the fuses on the backup system, meaning that failed too. A spokesperson from IW NHS Trust confirmed that systems continued to work for 30 minutes on battery after 23:15hrs, which resulted in a gradual shut down of systems.
999 calls
It’s been confirmed to OnTheWight that 999 calls continued to be routed to the Island.
All call centres handling 111 calls take calls for other areas when capacity exceeds demand or there is a significant issue affecting a service.
Radios and mobiles made available
With the systems down, staff were unable to crash call within the usual hospital system, so radios were distributed to Wards. IW NHS Trust mobile phones were also used.
Ward staff were instructed to use these to contact the Emergency Department. Specialist staff called in to respond to the incident were based there and responded to calls as they came in.
In addition, security staff at St Mary’s did continuous loops of the Wards checking that there were no problems.
Well-rehearsed contingency plans immediately activated
Commenting on the systems failure at St. Mary’s Hospital Shaun Stacey, Chief Operating Officer at Isle of Wight NHS Trust said,
“Between 23:15hrs on Tuesday 26th July and 00:45hrs on Wednesday 27th July telephone and IT systems at St. Mary’s Hospital failed due to a rare failure of the uninterruptable power supply (UPS) to the computer servers at St. Mary’s Hospital.
“Well rehearsed contingency plans were activated immediately with special arrangements in place for 999 calls to be routed by British Telecom to the Ambulance service. A significant internal incident was declared and key partner agencies such as Coastguard, Fire, Police along with Isle of Wight Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), NHS England and NHS Improvement were alerted.
“Specialist support staff were called in and contingency arrangements at St. Mary’s were activated to ensure the safety of patients and staff. The 999, 111 and internal telephone services were reinstated at 00:45hrs when power was restored and by 01:18hrs the significant incident status was stood down.
“Residual problems were worked on for the next couple of hours including rebooting IT systems. On Wednesday 27th July the Trust’s Estates Team and electrical contractors replaced the UPS unit and because of the rare and unusual nature of this incident took the old UPS unit away for examination as to the reason for its failure.
“I am grateful to all staff who responded magnificently to this rare and unusual incident.”
Review process underway
The electrical contractors advised this was a very rare and unusual event and the UPS unit has been removed for examination.
As with all incidents, a review process is underway to look at the cause and how the organisation responded, so that lessons can be learned for the future.
Image: © Used with the kind permission of Auntie P
