Recent IT Issues at Moatfield Surgery

You’ve probably noticed that we’ve had lots of IT Issues recently. We want to explain what’s been going on.

Our IT is managed by a company called SCW, who are contracted by NHS Sussex to provide and look after the IT Infrastructure for all GP Surgeries in Kent, Sussex, and other areas in the South of England.

Recently, they’ve been having problems which has impacted our Network.

This means that at times we’ve been struggling to access files on our drives, unable to connect to the internet, and in worst cases, have been unable to access our Clinical System, which stores all our electronic patient records.

BBC News have covered the recent outages in this article - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp3l0w2lv7yo

In addition to the Network Issues, we’ve had a few smaller scale issues with some of our 3rd party suppliers. In 2026 we have experienced:

  • 1 Clinical System outage – result of a national issue
  • 1 Telephone Outage – workaround implemented internally until engineer could come out.
  • 1 Triage/Texting System outage – result of a national issue
  • 1 Document Management System outage – result of a national issue
  • 1 Lab Request System Outage – result of a regional issue

Due to the way IT is structured in the NHS, we are very limited by what we can do at the practice and so we rely on the service desks to provide prompt support, and regular updates to help us formulate our plans, and keep patients and staff informed.

 

When outages like this occur, the Management Team and the Partners work closely to ensure that all staff know what they are doing, and to find safe workarounds.

However, our main priority is ensuring that we can run a SAFE service. This is why, depending on the issue, we may have to redirect you to an alternative provision such as 111 or A&E.

Unfortunately, the result of outages such as the ones we have been experiencing recently, is often a backlog of work; appointments to rebook, documents to file, referrals to send, tasks to complete etc. all of which must be completed while the new work filters in.

Our team are doing their best to catch up - and we will catch up - but it becomes increasingly difficult when outages persist as they have done.

 

We want to take a moment to say thank you to our patients for being so understanding throughout these issues, and for bearing with us while we have worked with the support teams to find solutions.

Thank you also to our wonderful staff for their resilience in the recent IT Outages. When things are beyond your control, it can make a hard day at work even tougher, and our team have dealt with the challenges admirably.

We have assurances from our IT providers that they are working on a long-term solution to the frequent Network Problems, and we trust that they will follow through.

Published: Apr 23, 2026