By Iain Gray

Copyright newsletter

Patients were asked to avoid the Emergency Departments unless absolutely necessary yesterday and today, with Daisy Hill Hospital in Newry and Craigavon Area Hospital among the facilities affected. But this afternoon (18th) the Trust said the trouble has “been resolved”, putting things back to normal from Friday morning (19th) – though officials still don’t know why it happened, and warned that it will take time for everything to get back to business as usual. Any patients who suffered cancellations during the two days of IT problems has been contacted, said the Trust, and their appointments are to be rescheduled “as soon as possible”. Said a Trust spokesperson: “The IT issues which caused disruption to our services have been resolved and a phased restart is complete. “All surgeries and outpatient appointments scheduled for tomorrow will take place as planned. Community services are also operating as normal. “Staff have contacted all patients whose appointments were cancelled this week, and we are working hard to reschedule these as soon as possible. “It will take some time for normal business to be fully restored, and we sincerely apologise once again to every patient and service user who has been affected by the disruption.” Officials are still investigating why the IT outage happened, added the spokesperson, and have asked their system provider for a full technical analysis, which will “inform wider root cause investigations which are already underway”. The Trust doesn’t believe it was any form of deliberate cyber-attack, however. “We are hugely grateful for the support of the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service, other trusts and the wider health and social care system who have been supporting us this week,” added the spokesperson. “We would also like to thank our local political representatives and other partner organisations who kindly offered assistance. “We again thank our dedicated staff who are working hard to ensure that we recover as quickly as possible from this issue and minimise any ongoing impact for patients.” A helpline for patients affected by the disruption is available until 8pm this evening, at 028 3756 0009.