Appointments cancelled as power cut hits Royal Free

THE Royal Free Hospital says its up and running again after an electrical fault cut off part of the Hampstead hospital's power and caused a shutdown on Tuesday.
All non emergency appointments were cancelled and ambulances were re-directed to the Whittington and University College London hospital's accident and emergency department.
The power cut at 8.10pm on Monday night caused the hospital's main computer system to crash disrupting services, including laboratory tests, and sending the patient booking system haywire.
A spokeswoman said the problem was “entirely unrelated” to the hospital's computer system, Cerner, which has crashed repeatedly since it was installed as part of a national pilot in June.
She said its main computer system went down following an “internal incident electrical fault” and that “the same fault would have developed whichever computer system we had”.
An investigation has been launched into its cause of the fault.
David Sloman, the hospital's chief executive, said today (Wednesday): “I am delighted that although we had a problem yesterday, the impact on patients was minimised by the smooth running of our emergency plans. Many staff worked very hard to cope with the emergency and restore normality as quickly as possible. I’m sorry that some patients had their surgery or appointments cancelled and thank them for their understanding.”