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Some pharmacies are experiencing disruption to patient services as a result of the global Microsoft outage, the National Pharmacy Association (NPA) has said.
The outage, which is affecting Outlook emails and Teams, is disrupting pharmacies’ ability to communicate with GP practices and some patients, because pharmacies cannot access the NHS email system.
A spokesperson for the NPA told The Pharmaceutical Journal on 13 November 2026: “We are aware of disruption impacting pharmacies today, including access to NHS email systems, due to the national issues with Microsoft.
“This affects a pharmacy’s ability to communicate with GP practices and some patients.
“Please bear with your pharmacy teams today, where waits may be longer than normal and there may be delays to some prescriptions.”
Disruption to Microsoft services, such as Outlook, Teams and Copilot, began around 6pm GMT on 12 November 2026.
In a status update issued at 9:14am GMT on 13 November 2026, Microsoft said: “Recovery efforts are ongoing across impacted infrastructure. We are seeing early signs of stabilisation, but service capacity has not yet returned to normal levels and health remains variable as traffic is carefully reintroduced.”
“At this time, we are not aware of any malicious activity causing this incident. We will continue to treat this with urgency until full mitigation, and we will share a full post-incident report with root cause and defense-in-depth actions after recovery is complete,” it added.
A spokesperson for the Royal College of Pharmacy told The Pharmaceutical Journal on 13 November 2026: “Teams are working hard to support patients and keep services running as smoothly as possible amid the disruption caused by the Microsoft outage.
“Some routine tasks may take longer than usual, but please be patient with your local pharmacy team as they work through the challenges. Their priority remains making sure patients get the care and support they need. We thank patients for their understanding.”
Leyla Hannbeck, chief executive of the Independent Pharmacies Association, said: “Pharmacies are reporting that access to NHS email has been affected, which makes it difficult to communicate across the NHS, and pharmacies are having to use the phone instead.
“However, thankfully, the pharmacy patient medical records system and recording platforms are still functioning today, which will allow pharmacies to continue delivering patient care despite the outage.”
Community Pharmacy England (CPE) has advised pharmacists to “use telephone lines for urgent queries” and “invoke business continuity plans if needed”.
In a statement published on 13 November 2026, CPE said: “If local systems or communications are significantly disrupted, follow your standard pharmacy business continuity plan arrangements and keep a record of any affected services.
“CPE is in touch with NHS England and will share more information as it becomes available.”
More to follow…
