One of the country’s largest hospitals has warned of the risk of a “catastrophic technical failure” in its computer systems after an IT failure caused chaos in the summer.

mater hospital The hospital in Dublin 7 suffered a malfunction in its patient registration computer system in July, leading to the cancellation of surgeries and the public being urged not to go to the emergency department.

A subsequent report said the hospital’s PatientCare registration system was beyond “end of life” and technical support was not available for critical elements.

He said: “Services have been affected by the full disruption; this includes unknown levels of harm to patients.

“There can be no guarantee that the system will not fail at any point in the future. Additionally, if the fault is in one of the unsupported elements of the system, it may not be possible to recover the fault.”

The report detailed how an IT outage in July left the hospital exposed as medics were forced to use paper files without access to electronic records.

Sixty procedures, including thirty-two surgeries, including “time-sensitive emergency care,” had to be postponed, he said.

The report stated: “Support for the outsourcing of surgical activities within the private hospital system has been rejected by the HSE.”

It was stated that 420 GP referrals were made through the system during the “downtime”, meaning the care of all these patients “will be delayed as a result of this failure”.

The Mater report said additional staff had been deployed across the organization to assist, but this would not be a sustainable solution for a more serious IT failure.

“Longer outages will require reduced activity as well as adjusted routes, outsourcing and overtime to maintain safe execution,” the document said.

He said the risk of a catastrophic IT disruption needed to be addressed urgently, as an extended issue could lead to a reduction in services of up to 50 per cent.

The report added: “A technical failure resulting in the loss of PatientCentre would impact all hospital services, including seventeen national services (which we provide).

“The hospital’s capacity to provide safe and effective services will be greatly reduced and the risk to patients able to access care will increase.”

It was stated that there have been repeated calls for a new patient registration system for the Mater “in 2021, again in 2022 and again in 2023”.

“Last week, we got a glimpse of the chaos caused by a technical glitch that lasted less than five days,” the report said.

It was stated that waiting for a regional solution covering a larger number of hospitals could take four to seven years.

The report said: “The hospital accepts that if we are given approval (for our own system) we will need to manage the risk for 18-24 months.

“However, this is much less than the expected time for the regional system. Therefore, waiting for a regional solution is not an option that the hospital can support.”

A separate analysis said Mater should consider that the PatientCare system was at high risk and that appropriate strategies were in place in the event of further failures.

Asked about the outage, a spokesperson said: “(The hospital) worked as quickly as possible to rectify the situation, but some patients were affected, for which the Mater hospital regrets and apologizes.

“The hospital has been working with the HSE for some time to update and replace its existing ICT system and is now part of the program to deliver a new National Electronic Health record.

“Pending the introduction of the new system, the Mater hospital has initiated a number of measures to mitigate future system failures.”