Significant delays at Kilkenny hospital as cyberattack cripples services

Patients attending St Luke’s General Hospital are facing significant delays as the impact of the cyber-attack on the Health Service Executive’s (HSE) IT systems continues to affect the delivery of services.

The HSE confirmed the hospital is still experiencing issues with their emergency department, outpatient appointments  and other appointments. They are advising the public to only attend if they are called for appointments or in case of emergency.

In a statement, the HSE said: “Although progress has been made to get priority systems back up and running including radiology, diagnostic/laboratory and patient information systems, many of the supporting systems are still being worked on.

“This means that there are many manual processes in place for example ordering X-rays and laboratory tests and also getting results back.”

Consultant Frank O’Dwyer added: “We want to advise patients that they will face delays when they come to the hospital.

“We regret these delays and are working very hard within the hospital and with HSE IT Services nationally to restore the rest of the systems we need to function efficiently.”

There are currently around 80 different interconnected IT systems in use at St Luke’s. making it difficult to restore.

Mr Dwyer added: “It is simply not an option to postpone appointments and wait until all the systems come back fully. Already we’ve had to cancel a high proportion of appointments since 14 May and it will take many weeks to catch up.

“Our advice to patients is to come to appointments if called and to be prepared to face delays.

“We ask patients to contact their GP or GP Out Of Hours Service in the first instance if their health problem is not urgent.”