‘We don’t know if patients are alive or dead’: NHS whistleblower warns East London hospital IT failures could cost lives
A senior clinician at an east London NHS trust has told LBC patients have already come to harm because of serious failures linked to a new electronic patient record system — including one case where a patient is said to have died after a referral was missed.
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The whistleblower, who works at Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust and asked not to be named, alleged a patient with Covid, who also had cancer, died while waiting for a haematology referral after the request was not received by the department.
The clinician said the problems have left staff “in tears”, caused missed referrals, delayed diagnoses, and created what they described as “chaos” across the organisation.
They told LBC they were speaking out because they were “very, very worried for patient safety”.
“It’s keeping me up at night,” they said. “We can’t deliver the service we want to for our patients, and I feel that we’re not being heard.”
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The senior clinician, who has worked in the NHS for several decades, said serious issues emerged after the Trust rolled out its electronic patient record system late last year.
They alleged referrals were not always reaching the right teams, staff were struggling with missing or unreliable patient information, and serious findings were not always being escalated properly.
“I think we are talking thousands of patients. I think we are talking about patient deaths," the whistleblower warned.
“It will take some time for those to be revealed, the impact that it’s had.”
The whistleblower said the disruption affects services across the Trust, including outpatient care, urgent treatment and support teams.
“It’s just chaos,” they said. “And it is impacting patients significantly.”
They described patients attending follow-up appointments without key results being ready, meaning appointments were being wasted and treatment was being delayed.
The clinician also claimed staff burnout and sickness had worsened the pressure on services, and said some patients may have been lost to follow-up or faced delayed diagnoses.
“Undoubtedly there are incidents, I know of incidents, where patients will come to harm, absolutely," they lamented.
They told LBC that when they tried to raise the alarm, it was like senior management 'didn't want to know.'
A patient treated at King George Hospital also told LBC they were left “completely in the dark” after waiting nearly two months for biopsy results when they had initially been told they would hear back within one to three weeks.
The patient, who had noticed soreness and changes in their breast, said they repeatedly tried to contact the hospital as they became “more and more anxious”.
When they finally got through, they said they were told delays were due to a “new IT system” which “no one knew how to use”.
They said no one gave them reassurance throughout the process.
Reacting to the allegations, clinical negligence solicitor and Leigh Day partner Sanja Strkljevic told LBC her eyes were "wide in shock”.
She said the claims were “really quite shocking” and raised serious concerns about patient safety, record-keeping and whether urgent cases were being identified and managed properly.
Ms Strkljevic said that if concerns raised internally had been brushed aside, that would be “extremely concerning”, adding that NHS trusts are bound by a statutory duty of candour when things go wrong.
She also said the scale of the allegations could justify an inquiry.
“If this is a serious concern about harm being caused to patients, then I would certainly consider that investigating the possibility of an inquiry and pursuing it would be something that would be very sensible,” she said.
The whistleblower said they felt concerns raised by staff had not been properly addressed by senior management, and questioned whether the Trust had been “transparent enough” about the scale of the problems.
A spokesperson for Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust said: “We have no evidence that our electronic patient record (EPR) has contributed to any patient deaths.
“Implementing a new system on such a scale inevitably caused a number of issues across our hospitals, which our teams continue to address.”
The trust also serves the constituency of former Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who declined to comment.