We have had many months of anticipation of a behind-the-scenes practice merger to enable our IT systems to ‘talk’ to each other across different sites, as mentioned in a previous post. We are delighted that our merger was formally approved by the CCG on 22nd September 2021.
This now means that all of our patient records will be accessible for us on a single Living Well Partnership IT system. This is good news for everybody as it allows GPs to be more time efficient at managing phone calls and eConsults. We utilise our clinical skill set across our different LWP locations according to need, which means that as clinicians we need to be able to quickly and easily access medical notes regardless which practice a patient originally registered with. Having a more efficient system means we can use our time, skills and expertise where it matters most.
There are no long-term changes to how you access your surgery or the services you receive. However, the IT merger unlocks the potential for a number of enhancements to the services we already offer and we are looking forward to patients benefiting from them in the coming year – watch this space!
15th-18th October
Our technical IT merger will happen from Friday 15th to Monday 18th October. We know that you need to contact us and will, of course, keep disruption to an absolute minimum. Thank you for bearing with us if we hit unexpected gremlins in the works over this time.
Please be assured that your confidential medical records remain fully intact as part of the merger process.
St Luke’s and Botley patients
Unfortunately due to limitations with our current NHS IT system it may be that some of our patients registered at St Luke’s and Botley may be affected over the IT merger time.
If you are registered here, there are a couple of things you can do to ensure the smoothest transition.
1. eConsult services
In order for our IT team to complete the work needed, we will have to close our eConsult service for patients registered in these practices only.
eConsult will be unavailable:
Thursday 14th October 17.00 – Monday 18th October 08.00
Phone lines will be unaffected and open normal hours over this time period.
2. Phone and Tablet Apps
St Luke’s and Botley patients using the NHS app may experience some disruption as a result of the IT systems merger.
If you validated your NHS App account using facial recognition (by recording and sending a short video reading a number), your NHS App should automatically transfer over to the new system but may take a few days to do so. If your App is still not active and working by Tuesday 26th October, please let us know via eConsult and we will send you an access code.
If you validated your NHS App account with a linkage key/access code (a long number) provided by the Surgery, unfortunately your App will not automatically transfer. Instead you will need a new linkage key. We can generate and provide this quickly for you if you submit an eConsult requesting one.
If you use the Patient Access App this will not automatically transfer over. We recommend downloading and using the NHS App to access online services instead.
3. Prescriptions
Repeat prescriptions that you would normally submit for the following week will need to be in to us by the end of the day at 18.30 on Tuesday 12th October.
We are so thankful for your cooperation in this exciting development, and we remain grateful to all our patients for your continued support as we develop and improve our services for the benefit of our local community.