Balmoral Surgery

29/04/2026

23/04/2026

UPDATE

Unfortunately, yet again we are struggling with IT problems, affecting a number of users, both clinicians and support staff.
In the last 20 working days (four weeks), we have had IT outages almost every day affecting part or all of our system, across a number of users. We have had a significant number of other occasions in the months prior to this.

It was reported in the media yesterday that whilst this is a widespread and known problem, General Practice was open as normal. This is not the case. Whilst we are open, and doing our best to deliver care, there are a number of problems building up. We have consultations that need repeating due to inability to complete a full assessment at the time, we have hospital letters building up as we have been unable to process then, and we have lost capacity on a number of other things such as blood tests and other appointments.

The IT issues are ongoing. Whilst we understand there is a great deal of work looking to implement a solution, we have had no additional support to assist us. It is inevitable that there will be a knock on to the care we can offer, until this is resolved, and likely beyond then whilst we work through the backlog. There may be a delay in you receiving results or information from hospital appointments, and it maybe harder to book an appointment with us.

Once again, this is completely out of our control. Please be patient with our staff who are doing their best, in what are extremely challenging times for us.

23/04/2026

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg4yyjr84yo

The Kent Local Medical Committee says intermittent outages are "totally ridiculous".

22/04/2026

We are currently experiencing significant IT issues, which are now also affecting our phone lines. If you require urgent medical assistance, please call 111 or visit your local Urgent Treatment Centre (UTC).

We apologise for the inconvenience.

This is a Kent-wide issue, and teams are working hard to resolve it as quickly as possible.

21/04/2026

We apologise for the inconvenience caused by the current IT issues. This is an issue affecting practices across Kent and Medway and beyond over which we have no control.

We know this may be frustrating for you and thank you for your patience.

Resolving this issue is out of our hands and our staff are working under significant extra pressure, so we would ask patients to continue to treat all of our staff with courtesy – abusive behaviour will not be tolerated

20/04/2026

⚠️ We are currently experiencing computer/IT issues at the practice. We are still here to help but waiting times may be longer than usual.

We are sorry for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience while we work to resolve the problem.

This is a national issue and is being investigated.

16/04/2026

⚠️ We are currently experiencing computer/IT issues at the practice. Waiting times may be longer

We are sorry for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience while we work to resolve the problem.

This is a national issue and is being investigated.

15/04/2026

⚠️ We are currently experiencing computer/IT issues at the practice. Waiting times may be longer than usual.

Telephone lines are also affected.

We are sorry for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience while we work to resolve the problem.

This is a national issue and is being investigated.

07/04/2026

⚠️ We are currently experiencing computer/IT issues at the practice. Waiting times may be longer than usual

We are sorry for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience while we work to resolve the problem.

01/04/2026

Good morning,

When you next submit an online consultation request, you may notice that the provider that we are using has changed. We have decided to move from Anima back to eConsult as we believe this is better for our patients and our clinicians.

To submit a request, you need to go to same place on our website as before. The only difference is that in the "contact you doctor online" box it now says eConsult rather than Anima.

We hope that this change is as seamless as possible for our patients, but if you do have any problems you can phone 01304 373444 and speak to one of our Care Navigators who will be happy to help you.

Many thanks