GP Websites Go Dark Across England and Wales After Silicon Practice Enters Administration

Hundreds of GP practice websites across England and Wales are offline as of today, Oct. 29, after the company that ran them went into administration.

Silicon Practice, the trading name of Schappit Ltd, supplied websites, online booking and online consultation tools to around 500 practices in England, just under 10% of the total. Visitors to affected sites get a "502 Bad Gateway" error.

The company's own marketing claims more than 1,000 websites served across the UK and a partnership with the NHS dating to 2005. Schappit filed a notice of intention to appoint administrators earlier this month.

Where patients are feeling it

London, Hertfordshire, Gloucestershire, Norfolk and Swansea are among the areas reporting problems. Services in Wales are also affected.

Swansea Bay University Health Board said it knew of three practice websites that had stopped working.

Rowcroft Medical Centre in Stroud told patients it "received information late on Friday October 24 that the company who run GP websites across the county has gone into administration and ceased trading." The practice said appointments, phone calls, emails and the NHS app were unaffected. It asked anyone who had submitted an online form in the previous four hours without a reply to call.

Southgate Surgery in north London told patients its website was unavailable "because our provider went into administration without warning." It described the outage as temporary while it finds a new provider.

West Pottergate Medical Practice in Norwich warned patients that if they had sent an online form about an urgent problem, "we may not have received it."

Phones take the load

School Lane Surgery in Thetford said the disruption "is going to last longer than we had hoped." It described a national issue with no confirmed restoration date. Its phone lines are busier than usual, it said, and it has put as many staff as possible on calls.

The West and North London Integrated Care Board told practices using Silicon's services to inform patients that they will not have access to online consultation requests. They are to offer other ways to reach the practice for clinical support "until an alternative online consultation provider is in place."

The timing is significant because of how heavily appointments now run through digital channels. Since last year, every practice in England has been required to offer online booking. More than 40% of appointments are now booked that way.

Silicon Practice also ran FootFall, a tool it advertised as cutting patient phone calls to practices by 30%. With FootFall down, practices are taking more of that volume back by phone.

What NHS England and GP leaders say

An NHS England spokesperson said that "the majority" of GP practice websites are running as normal, though some practices using Silicon Practice will be affected. Patients whose site is down should phone or visit the practice as usual, the spokesperson said.

NHS England has contacted affected practices with advice on maintaining business continuity and limiting the impact on patient care. It has not said how long the outage will last. NHS England puts the affected share at fewer than 10% of more than 6,000 practices in England.

Prof Victoria Tzortziou Brown, president of the Royal College of GPs, said practice websites are "an increasingly important way for patients to access care, book appointments and find information." She said that when they fail it is "hugely disruptive for patients" and adds pressure on "already stretched practice teams."

She called for "prompt, practical support" from NHS England and local NHS organisations to restore sites and make sure patients know how to reach their practice in the meantime.

The dependency problem

One private supplier served about a tenth of English practices. When it failed, those practices lost their websites and their online request forms together.

Practices were required to offer online booking, and the NHS app, which the practices themselves say still works, is the fallback.

Several practices say they are looking for replacement providers. Who pays for the migration, and whether a replacement can be in place before winter demand builds, have not been addressed in any public statement from NHS England.

Silicon Practice has not publicly answered the "without warning" description used by practices. ITV News said it had contacted the company for comment. The notice of intention to appoint administrators was filed before practices say they were told, and that gap is unexplained.

For now the instruction to patients is unchanged: call the surgery, or turn up. It is not yet clear how long the 500-odd affected practices will be answering that traffic with no confirmed date for their online services to return.