Hospital managers last night could not say how many appointments would be cancelled because of Wednesday’s public sector worker strike.

They also admitted they have no plans to bring in extra staff to cover as health workers join the biggest national walkout since the 1926 General Strike.

The Oxford University Hospitals NHS trust (OUH) runs the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre, John Radcliffe, Horton and Churchill hospitals.

The 30 unions backing the strike include Unite and Unison, which count thousands of hospital staff among their members.

The OUH said it was ‘working with union representatives to minimise disruption to patients’ and although some disruption was expected to non urgent appointments in diagnostic radiography and imaging, patients had already been informed.

Meanwhile, a £15.7m hospital IT system which was due to go live this weekend has also been delayed indefinitely.

The Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust (OUH) had planned to launch the new Electronic Patient Record at the John Radcliffe, Churchill and Horton hospitals tomorrow.

The database will contain patient records including medical history, details of past operations and appointments.

Earlier this week, the trust had warned patients could experience some delays as staff got used to using it.

In a statement released yesterday the OUH said the scheme, which has been paid for by the Department of Health, had been postponed.

It said: “All parties – BT, Cerner, the Southern Programme for IT and the trust – have agreed that some additional time is needed to ensure a smooth implementation.

“The decision to delay has been taken because some of the preparatory work during the pre implementation process has taken longer than expected to complete.”