THE NHS has issued an update after an internet crash caused disruption across health services in Herefordshire, including the county hospital and GP surgeries.

The internet, which runs vital NHS services like patients' clinical records, prescriptions and telephone lines to doctors' surgeries, was down for the entire day yesterday (October 11), meaning some pre-arranged appointments could not go ahead and some patients struggled to access medication and other treatment.

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Today (October 12), a spokesperson for Herefordshire and Worcestershire Integrated Care System said: "NHS and GP practice services were restored by 9pm last night.

"Some services are busier than expected this morning, so we appreciate your patience as we return to normal as quickly as possible. 

"Please continue to use our services and attend booked appointments as normal."

Originally, Hereford and Worcester Fire and Rescue Service had posted on Facebook that the issues were expected to be solved by 11am that day, but they persisted for longer than expected, causing a day of disruption for staff and patients.

While urgent appointments and support remained available, GPs urged patients to use NHS 111 in the first instance before contacting surgeries.

Herefordshire Council services were also affected by the outage. A spokesperson said: “We are aware of disruption to some access to the Health and Social Care Network within parts of Herefordshire on 11th October 2023, which was resolved around 9pm that evening. Herefordshire Council works closely with regional health and care partners and our systems automatically share certain health and care related information via this network. These automatic updates were unavailable during the disruption but have since resumed correctly. Herefordshire Council’s main internet and data connections were not affected.”