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Hospital IT Glitch Floods GPs with Duplicate Blood Results
3 Aug
Summary
- An IT issue at a hospital pathology department led to duplicate blood results.
- Medical practices faced an emerging patient safety issue with workload implications.
- The trust experienced the problem after its electronic patient record system went live.
An IT issue at the University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust's pathology department has led to a significant problem for general practitioners. Medical practices have reported receiving numerous duplicate blood results, in some cases up to 200 for a single patient. This has created an emerging patient safety concern, prompting GPs to conduct additional checks to ensure no critical findings are missed.
The situation has caused considerable workload implications for practices in east Cornwall and west Devon. Reviewing these duplicate results requires manual verification to identify any abnormalities. Health bosses have stated that patients awaiting results will be contacted by their GP practice as soon as possible. Some non-urgent appointments and procedures may be rearranged due to the increased workload.
The trust explained that the problem occurred after its electronic patient record system went live. A message processing issue between systems resulted in duplicate pathology results being sent from its laboratories. The trust apologized for the unexpected problem and is working closely with GP practices, reassuring them that the issue originated at the hospital and not within their practices.
