The NHS has issued a fresh update to patients as a global Microsoft IT outage continues to disrupt services across the UK and worldwide. In a message shared on X on Friday, November 13, the health service reassured the public that staff are working to keep critical services and appointments running.
Patients have been urged to continue attending their scheduled appointments unless they are specifically told otherwise. The NHS also reminded people to use NHS 111 for immediate medical help or to call 999 in an emergency.
NHS statement on appointments
In its alert, the NHS said: "NHS staff are working to ensure critical services and appointments continue for patients, despite the global Microsoft issue having a disruptive impact. Please attend appointments unless told otherwise. If you need immediate medical help, use 111, or call 999 in an emergency."
The widespread disruption began early on Friday morning and has affected thousands of businesses, schools, and public services across the UK and around the world. Core Microsoft 365 tools, including Outlook, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Copilot, OneDrive, OneNote, and SharePoint, have suffered major failures, leaving staff unable to send emails or access shared files.
Impact on health services
Emergency 999 phone lines and life-saving care remain fully operational. However, the outage has caused significant administrative bottlenecks across the health service.
Most hospital procedures and outpatient clinics are proceeding with paper records and backup systems. Disrupted digital calendars have forced the rescheduling of a small number of non-urgent appointments and planned procedures.
Many local doctors' surgeries have struggled to access online consultation tools, and some have been temporarily locked out of patient record systems because email-based security checks are failing.
Wider disruption across the UK
The National Pharmacy Association warned of longer prescription waiting times because pharmacies cannot easily email GP practices, prompting some to fall back on paper prescriptions. NHS 111 call handlers have faced delays sending electronic referrals to local clinics.
The IT failure extends beyond the health sector. Several UK police forces reported that they cannot accept online crime reports and advised the public to use the 101 non-emergency phone line instead.
In the justice system, the courts' digital Common Platform went down, leaving magistrates' courts and prosecutors unable to view digital case lists or schedule upcoming hearings. Hundreds of schools, universities, and private companies have also asked parents and customers to telephone them directly rather than sending emails.
Cause and recovery
Microsoft has confirmed that the outage was not caused by a cyberattack. Instead, a technical fault caused many email servers to fail automated "health checks" and go offline, overloading the remaining systems.
As of late Friday morning, Microsoft engineers are rolling out a fix and reporting early signs of stabilisation. Traffic is gradually being restored, and the company has extended its email delivery window to 48 hours to ensure delayed messages are not lost.
However, Microsoft warned that it will take more time for services to return to full capacity, meaning intermittent delays are likely to continue into the afternoon.
