Cancelled cancer surgery, no medical notes... Couple each suffer IT chaos on SAME day at different hospitals

A man waited for two-and-a-half hours’ to find out his crucial cancer surgery had been cancelled. And on the very same day, at a different hospital, his wife claims she was forced to recount her medical history from memory as staff ‘didn’t have any details for her’.

The couple’s ordeal comes amid an ongoing IT crisis plaguing four major hospitals across Greater Manchester. The IT glitches have continued for two weeks, forcing appointments and surgeries to be cancelled, as well as causing A&E delays, according to multiple NHS staff.

Experts have been flown in from the U.S.A to find a fix, and the hospitals have moved to a paper system, with documents being handwritten. But in the meantime, patients and staff have told the Manchester Evening News that they are suffering the fallout of ‘severe delays’ to patient care.

READ MORE:'Dangerous' IT chaos hitting four Greater Manchester hospitals set to 'last another week', medics warn

Husband and wife Douglas Walton and Caroline Lingard, both 61, were due to have appointments at different hospitals on May 24. Douglas was due to have a vital cancer operation, which would prevent some of the life-changing symptoms he was suffering on his bladder, after being diagnosed with prostate cancer three years ago.

Douglas, who is self-employed, was ‘grateful’ to learn he’d been given an operation date and took time off work to get the pre-operation checks done and to self-isolate before the surgery. But when he arrived at North Manchester General Hospital the morning of the appointment, he was kept ‘waiting for two-and-a-half hours’, before being told to go home.

Staff told the patient they could not do any of the operations for the three patients waiting that morning because their IT