Sussex hospital trust critical incident latest: emergency departments now seeing patients as normal after staff work hard to restore IT systems overnight

At 9am today (Monday, January 15), a spokesperson announced that ‘good progress’ had been made overnight on restoring the IT systems.

The announcement said: “Anyone with a planned appointment today should attend as normal unless they are contacted by our staff. Our Emergency Departments are receiving patients as normal, but please be aware that all teams are under additional pressure after the disruption over the weekend – if your health problem is not an emergency, or life-threatening, please visit 111.nhs.uk or call 111 for help or advice.”

‘Critical incident’ declared by hospital trust

At 10pm on Sunday, January 14, the trust announced that the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton and the Princess Royal Hospital in Haywards Heath had been ‘significantly affected’ by IT and phone problems and declared a critical incident. They said St Richard’s Hospital in Chichester and Worthing Hospital were also affected ‘to a lesser degree’. They added that the ambulance service should not take patients to Brighton or Haywards Heath and said people would not be able to telephone the Brighton and Haywards Heath hospitals.

At 11.30pm on Sunday, a spokesperson said: “Colleagues continue to work tirelessly to ensure systems are back up and running, and stable.”

The trust added this morning: “We would like to say thank you to everyone who has responded so brilliantly – our colleagues in IT and Facilities and Estates, our clinical teams, the South East Coast Ambulance Service, and other NHS Trusts and partners.”