Publish date: 22 April 2022
The Informatics Team are aware that some Mersey Care staff, particularly those based at Mid Mersey sites, are experiencing IT issues, which are causing inconvenience for the provision of your service.
The team appreciate how frustrating these issues can be and would like to reassure you that they are doing all they can to address these problems to ensure you are able to access the digital systems and information you need to work and deliver your service effectively.
To provide you with an update on the actions the team have taken to address some of the main IT issues currently being experienced, please read the updates below. If you have contacted the IT Service Desk directly about an issue you are experiencing, a member of the digital team will be in touch. Similarly, those who raised questions at the recent Mersey Care Q&A session will also be contacted directly.
Current IT issues and key actions
IT Service Desk performance
Issue: Whilst it has been reported that our digital support colleagues are extremely helpful, concerns have been raised regarding the longer than normal waiting times to contact the IT Service Desk to report an issue or raise a digital request.
Reason: Currently, the IT Service Desk is experiencing a period of reduced staffing levels due to sickness and challenges recruiting new members to the team. This has increased the time taken to answer telephone calls to the IT Service Desk.
Resolution: IT recruitment is a documented risk within the Trust and there is an urgent recruitment drive underway to restore resource levels to an appropriate level, which will help improve call wait times and your experience of the service. In the meantime, our digital colleagues are working extremely hard to respond to your enquiries as efficiently and effectively as they can. All colleagues are reminded that where possible you should only contact the IT Service Desk by telephone for urgent digital support, such as problems that are impacting your ability to work or deliver your service. For all other digital support requests, please use the IT Service Desk’s online web form or Live Chat facility which are available through the Self-Service Portal. This portal can be accessed from your computer desktop via the icon below and provides a much quicker method of logging your request. It also frees up the telephone for more urgent digital support enquiries.
Network performance
Issue: Several staff have reported very slow performance when accessing various systems such as Outlook and Rio.
Reason: To support staff joining Mersey Care from the former North West Boroughs Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, the digital infrastructure was temporarily configured to enable colleagues to access IT systems and data from sites that were on a different NHS organisation network. Although suitable in the short term, this was not a long term solution as it decreases the speed of the network which causes performance issues when accessing systems.
Resolution: The temporary configuration is being replaced with dedicated network connections to the Mersey Care network at former North West Boroughs sites. The first two have been installed and the remaining sites are expected to be completed in the coming weeks. Once the network connections are made live, colleagues will experience an immediate improvement in performance
Access to G and H drives
Issue: Some former North West Boroughs colleagues are experiencing difficulties accessing their Home (H) and Shared (G) drives with some staff not able to access these folders and others experiencing very slow performance.
Reason: Although some former North West Boroughs colleagues have now moved to a Mersey Care device, the data held within your Home (H) and Shared (G) drives are still stored within the datacentre of your previous digital support provider – the Mid Mersey Digital Alliance (MMDA) and access to these folders has been enabled through a temporary digital network solution. Intermittently, connection to these folders has been lost causing slow performance or lost access.
Resolution: As a temporary measure, colleagues can restore access to their Home (H) and Shared (G) drives from the ‘Restore Shared Drives’ icon on your computer desktop below.
As a longer-term solution, those who have been provided with a Mersey Care device will have their Home (H) drive moved from MMDA to Microsoft OneDrive, which is an online file storage service. NHS Informatics Merseyside (IM) also plans to move the Shared (G) drive folder from being hosted by MMDA to IM out of hours during the weekend commencing 29 April 2022. This will enable seamless access and will remove the need for you to manually restore access by clicking on the desktop icon above.
Rio clinical system access using Microsoft Edge
Issue: Some staff are unable to access or use the Rio clinical system using the Internet browser Microsoft Edge.
Reason: Rio relies on the use of Internet Explorer v11.0 and some colleagues who have tried to access the system using Microsoft Edge have experienced problems.
Resolution: NHS Informatics Merseyside’s Technical Service has identified a solution. Once implemented, this will enable Rio to be opened in compatibility mode using Microsoft Edge.
Further information and support
Further updates in relation to the above will be communicated.
If you are continuing to experience a problem that cannot be resolved by following the guidance above, contact the IT Service Desk using the Self Service Portal and only use the telephone for urgent digital support requests.
To help provide further support, we have introduced a dedicated support team who will be providing a floor walking service at those sites currently affected to provide advice and support. This team will also be working closely with the IT Service Desk to respond to specific issues in relation to the above.
For guidance on choosing the best contact method for our IT Service Desk, please read our useful infographic.
The team thank you in advance for your support.