THE Great Western Hospital has apologised to patients for lengthy waits at A&E following an IT system failure.

For around three hours on Tuesday evening, one of the hospital IT systems stopped working, causing delays in the emergency department.

A spokeswoman from Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said: “We apologise that some patients will have been waiting for a sometime and are working hard to treat everybody as quickly as possible.

"One of our IT systems, which is used to record patient notes, was not working.

“During this time, staff reverted to using the tried and tested method of paper forms.”   

 “We continued to assess patients but, as a result of the IT system failure, we have a high number of patients in our Emergency Department.

“Thank you to all our staff who continue to work extremely hard to provide safe and high-quality care.”