Major IT failure continues to impact Kent and Medway GP practices

GP practices across Kent and Medway are facing disruption following a major IT failure which led to online services being suspended. 

The outage left clinicians and administration teams at the majority of surgeries unable to access patient records, medication histories, appointment systems or telephone systems, according to a notice from the Kent Local Medical Committee issued on 19 January.

“GP teams have been implementing contingency and backup arrangements, but patients are likely to experience significant disruption when contacting practices.

“Online services have been suspended, and phone lines are expected to be extremely busy. In some cases, practices do not have the ability to receive telephone calls due to the outage,” the notice says.

It adds: “Once the systems are restored this outage will continue to impact GP practices for many days as practices work to catch up.

“GP leaders have repeatedly raised concerns about the resilience and safety risks of GP IT systems in Kent and Medway following multiple outages across the region over the past year.”

NHS Kent and Medway Integrated Care Board (ICB) confirmed that a “multi-site network disruption affecting GP practices across multiple regions” had been caused by a connectivity performance problem within a datacentre.

“Reported effects include slow network performance and loss of access to services hosted at the datacentre, including Always On Virtual Private Network (AOVPN),” it said.

The ICB told Digital Health News on 20 January that systems were “back to normal” and they were “closely monitoring the situation“,  but on 21 January several GP practices have notices on the websites warning of continued disruption to patient care.

Greensand Health Centre said: “Please be aware that there is a network issue affecting GP surgeries in Kent and Medway, including us here at Greensand Health Centre. Our telephone lines and clinical systems are affected.

“We currently do not have access to patient records including test results, prescriptions or referrals.”

Canterbury Medical Practice said: “Due to a major regional network issue yesterday which continues today, impacting our systems, our team is currently working through a backlog.

“Our eConsults remain open from 10 am today, as well as our phone lines but there may be a delay in us getting back to you. We are working hard to minimise disruption where possible.”

Swanley Medical Practice said: “Thank you for your patience while we continue to recover from the IT systems outage that occurred on 19 January 2026.

“Our team is working to restore full service, but response times may be longer than usual over the coming days.”

EMIS is the most widely used GP practice IT system in England, in use at more than half of practices across the country.

A spokesperson for Optum (formerly EMIS) said: “We are aware of a local infrastructure issue in Kent and Medway impacting GP IT systems, voice systems and other connectivity. This was not specific to GP systems or to EMIS”

In November 2024, an outage to the EMIS IT system caused GPs access to be cut off to appointment booking systems and patient records.