- Asked by: Rhoda Grant, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Labour
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Date lodged: Monday, 02 December 2013
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Current Status:
Answered by Alex Neil on 12 December 2013
To ask the Scottish Government, in relation to the IT failure at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, whether (a) domain name system requests had been failing from 26 September 2013 and (b) new web filter software had been brought online on the day of the failure and, if so, for what reason this is not mentioned in the report, Technical Assurance Review: NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde: Critical Incident - 1 October 2013.
Answer
(a) Domain Name requests had not been failing previous to the incident.
(b) Web filtering software was not brought online on the day of the incident and is not relevant to the incident of 1 October 2013.
- Asked by: Rhoda Grant, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Labour
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Date lodged: Monday, 02 December 2013
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Current Status:
Answered by Alex Neil on 12 December 2013
To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde becoming "paper-light" over the next 12 months in light of the IT failure of 1 October 2013 and what guidance the Scottish Government will give to clinicians on treating patients when no patient information is available.
Answer
The position of Scottish Government and NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde remains unchanged. The eHealth Strategy makes clear the commitment for all health boards to become ‘paper-light’ in a controlled and incremental fashion because of the considerable benefits that this brings (including better service continuity and information availability compared to paper). Paper workarounds do have their place in certain circumstances, but increasingly health boards are deploying more resilient ICT which means that information can still be available from alternative digital sources. Each board has business continuity plans, and associated guidance in this area.
- Asked by: Rhoda Grant, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Labour
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Date lodged: Monday, 02 December 2013
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Current Status:
Answered by Alex Neil on 12 December 2013
To ask the Scottish Government whether all the information actualisation/processing caused by the IT failure at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde of 1 October 2013 has been completed.
Answer
Information processing has been completed. All national returns have been provided and all patient transactions processed. No business or patient data was lost.
- Asked by: Rhoda Grant, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Labour
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Date lodged: Monday, 02 December 2013
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Current Status:
Answered by Alex Neil on 12 December 2013
To ask the Scottish Government, in relation to the IT failure at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde on 1 October 2013, whether the built-in Windows back-up service was in use at the time of the incident.
Answer
Native Windows Server Backup was not being used prior to the incident. Symantec Backup Exec was used to backup the domain controllers. It was Symantec Backup Exec which was used to recover Active Directory.
- Asked by: Rhoda Grant, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Labour
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Date lodged: Monday, 02 December 2013
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Current Status:
Answered by Alex Neil on 12 December 2013
To ask the Scottish Government whether NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde has a disaster recovery site to switch to in the event of a failure of its main site and what the reasons are for its position on this matter.
Answer
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde runs dual active data centres, separated by 14 km and the River Clyde. These are linked by multiple super-high speed data connections, making the concept of a passive disaster recovery site redundant. This design is accepted best practice for modern data centres.
- Asked by: Rhoda Grant, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Labour
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Date lodged: Monday, 02 December 2013
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Current Status:
Answered by Alex Neil on 12 December 2013
To ask the Scottish Government how many (a) planned and (b) unplanned service outages there have been on NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde's IT systems since 1 October 2013.
Answer
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde’s statistics for “Outage” include incidents where systems remain fully available to users, but elements are undergoing maintenance or remedial activities. In the period 2 October to 3 December there have been 10 planned outages (all restricted to either individual applications or sites. All occurred either out of hours when no users dependent on the services, or by pre-arrangement such that no risk to services occurred). There have been four periods of unplanned partial/total individual server outages during the period under review. These ranged between five and 60 minutes and on none of these occasions were patient services disrupted. This must be placed within the context of an IT estate with over 400 applications, supporting 11 major hospitals, over 250 GP and Health Centres and 40,000 staff.
- Asked by: Rhoda Grant, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Labour
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Date lodged: Monday, 02 December 2013
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Current Status:
Answered by Alex Neil on 12 December 2013
To ask the Scottish Government how many NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde patients were attended by medical staff when the clinical notes were unavailable during the IT failure of 1 October 2013.
Answer
More than 10,000 patients were attended by medical staff during the IT failure of 1 October 2013. As there was variable access to both electronic and paper clinical notes throughout the incident it is not possible to quantify for how many patients clinical notes were not available in each case.
- Asked by: Rhoda Grant, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Labour
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Date lodged: Monday, 02 December 2013
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Current Status:
Answered by Alex Neil on 12 December 2013
To ask the Scottish Government how many rapid alerts were caused by the IT failure at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde of 1 October 2013.
Answer
Maternity and emergency services were maintained throughout the period disrupted by the IT incident.
- Asked by: Rhoda Grant, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Labour
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 03 December 2013
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Current Status:
Answered by Michael Matheson on 11 December 2013
To ask the Scottish Government whether the implementation plans produced by NHS boards for Neonatal Care in Scotland: a Quality Framework will be made public and, if so, in what form.
Answer
The new Local Delivery Plan format, focusing on the 12 priority areas for action in the Routemap to the 2020 Vision for Health and Social Care, will give NHS boards the opportunity to set out the action they are taking to implement Neonatal Care in Scotland: A Quality Framework.
Considerable progress has already been made, with the vast majority of statements in Neonatal Care in Scotland: A Quality Framework already being met, and full implementation taking place over the next five to 10 years.
- Asked by: Rhoda Grant, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Labour
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 03 December 2013
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Current Status:
Answered by Michael Matheson on 11 December 2013
To ask the Scottish Government how regularly it will meet (a) NHS boards and (b) managed clinical networks to discuss progress toward implementing Neonatal Care in Scotland: a Quality Framework.
Answer
Discussions with NHS boards and managed clinical networks are underway to determine what the process will be for monitoring the implementation of Neonatal Care in Scotland: A Quality Framework. Once agreed with Ministers, the governance process will form part of this discussion.
Considerable progress has already been made, with the vast majority of statements in Neonatal Care in Scotland: A Quality Framework already being met, and full implementation taking place over the next five to 10 years.