An ongoing fault with an acute trust’s new pathology system has left GPs with ‘significant’ workload issues and ‘anxiety’ for patient safety.
At the start of this month, University Hospital Southampton (UHS) trust transferred to a new pathology IT system which resulted in issues with processing blood tests and communicating results.
Wessex LMCs said the trust has shown a ‘distinct lack of understanding’ of general practice, which has caused ‘large issues’ and ‘an enormous associated workload’ for GPs.
GPs in the area told Pulse that there was immediately a ‘massive backlog’ from 1 July, as blood test requests were sent using the ‘old forms’ which the lab could not process quickly enough.
However, one GP partner, who wished to remain anonymous, said there was ‘absolutely no communication with primary care’ to clarify that the old forms should not be used.
As a result of this backlog, UHS introduced a ‘temporary measure’ which told GP practices they could only request ‘urgent blood tests’, meaning all routine blood tests were suspended.
This restriction was lifted last week, and UHS has since cleared the initial backlog, however GPs told Pulse that they are still not receiving blood test results, and those they do receive are often not in the correct format.
Hampshire and Isle of Wight ICB said it is still working with partners to resolve the faults with the system and has ‘established a range of contingency plans’ with practices.
According to local GPs, this fault with the new Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) is being treated as a ‘critical incident’ and there are daily calls between the ICB, UHS and practices.
NHS England confirmed to Pulse that it has been informed of the issue, which is being dealt with locally.
A Southampton GP partner, who preferred to remain anonymous, said that on top of the initial backlog – caused by slow processing of old forms – there has also been a ‘significant proportion of path results that aren’t coming into GP systems’.
In one surgery, around 70% of bloods requested in one week had not yet received results.
The GP partner said that ‘results are being processed at the hospital’ but GPs ‘can’t see them’ as a result of faults with the system.
She continued: ‘We are trying to make clinical decisions based on results and we’re not seeing them […] It’s causing a significant degree of anxiety and concern for patient safety.’
As well as missing results, this GP partner’s practice is also receiving results which are ‘not operable’ with GP IT systems, meaning they have to hand-write them, as well as results in the ‘wrong units of measurements’.
The practice has also asked one of their nurses to do extra sessions to manage the administrative work generated by this issue.
According to local GPs, the ICB has agreed to make payments to practices to help cover the cost of extra work and staff time.
There is also the possibility that once the issue is fully resolved, practices will be given protected closure time to audit and process all of the results.
Wessex LMCs joint CEO Dr Laura Edwards told Pulse that they are ‘actively engaging’ with UHS and the ICB to find a ‘rapid resolution’ to the weeks-long issue.
She said: ‘We are very disappointed that there appears to have been a distinct lack of understanding of primary care processes or use of the systems or any kind of initial impact assessment on General Practice prior to the roll out.
‘This has sadly resulted in large issues both for the Trust initially and for a large number of practices which is ongoing. This is causing an enormous associated workload in a time when practices are already overwhelmed.’
Dr Edwards said the LMC is also concerned that the acute trust ‘has not fully appreciated the gravity of the situation’, and that the ‘full impact’ on patient safety is yet to be realised.
Last week, UHS published an update on its website which said that while using the new system, teams had ‘encountered some issues that resulted in delays to testing turnaround times’.
UHS said it is working with GPs and the ICB to ‘improve parts of the LIMS system that are still not working as well as we would want’.
The update continued: ‘Whilst we have now resolved the backlog in tests and are accepting routine bookings there continues to be an issue with the visibility of results appearing on GPs systems.
‘Further updates are needed to help the system code the tests, and while this takes place it is taking longer for GPs to receive and review the results.
‘This additional time may have an impact on the number of appointments a GP surgery can offer while the system coding issue is resolved.’
Pulse has approached UHS for comment.
ICB primary care director James Roach said they are ‘committed to resolving this as quickly as possible’.
‘We have established a range of contingency plans with our practices to ensure any disruption is minimised, and grateful to staff at both GP practices and University Hospital Southampton for their support in keeping our patients safe, while all remaining issues are resolved,’ he added.
This laboratory system fault is not related to the global IT outage which last week resulted in issues with EMIS and challenges for GPs nationally.
Last month, a problem with pathology labs in London left GPs ‘flying blind’ with delays to test results and cancelled hospital appointments.
This was caused by a ransomware cyber attack on Synnovis, a provider of lab services for a group of London hospitals.
