Microsoft outage could leave people in hospital for longer and others low on medication, warns top pharmacist

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EXCLUSIVE: The chair of a community pharmacy association revealed the impact Microsoft outages have had on chemists, leaving some driving to hospitals to pick up paper and drop medication

Some patients could be kept in hospitals longer while some people could run low on medication amid the Microsoft outage that has impacted pharmacies and the NHS, a top pharmacist has warned.

The UK Government and its counterparts worldwide have been forced to put in place contingency measures due to the outage, which has seen Microsoft scramble to restore email, Teams and other services since they went down yesterday around 6pm.

Olivier Picard, the chair of the National Pharmacy Association, shared the impact of Friday's tech disruptions as pharmacists have been left to "work around the system". Pharmacies were unable to access their NHS emails meaning they could not contact hospitals or GPs for information on patients.

Mr Picard, a Berkshire based pharmacist, revealed some chemists were forced to revert to contingency plans, and have people drive to hospitals to collect paper and come back to prepare medication to take back for patients.

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The NPA chair, who represents 6,000 members, shared the difficulties he faced this morning. He told the Mirror that dispensing or receiving prescriptions was not impacted as this is not done through an NHS email.

Mr Picard said: "Where there's been a problem is, for example, in local surgeries, sometimes they only allow patients to request repeats either through the NHS App or via NHS email for security reasons." He added that patients have come in to request prescriptions but pharmacists have been unable to do this due to the outage.

He added: "Some patients are telling me, 'Well, I'm running out of medication over the weekend.' There could be an argument around when it is reasonable to ask for a repeat prescription, but at the same time, these patients could be in a position where they have to wait for their repeat…

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