Appointments continuing at Stafford's County Hospital as IT system back up

All outpatient appointments and elective surgery procedures were cancelled at both County Hospital in Stafford and Royal Stoke University Hospital due to the network issue on Tuesday and yesterday.

But now the issues have been resolved and appointments were set to be held today, according to the trust that runs the hospitals.

The University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust shared an urgent message on its Facebook and Twitter pages to alert patients on Tuesday, but staff were unable to call those affected directly, as the IT problems meant they were unable to access patient records to find their contact details.

Dr John Oxtoby, medical director, said: “We would like to apologise to patients who have been affected by issues with our IT systems and telephone lines across both Royal Stoke University and County Hospitals over the last two days.

"Unfortunately this impacted on clinical care as electronic access to patient notes, scans and results of tests were affected.

“Our teams worked tirelessly with our network provider to identify and resolve the issues and staff across both hospitals have gone above and beyond to keep our patients safe. We are all looking forward to being able to get back to normal.

“We will now focus our efforts on ensuring that all patients who have missed appointments are contacted and arrangements can be made for them to have their outpatient appointment or elective surgery as soon as possible.”