QUESTIONS about the outage of a Basingstoke GP surgery’s system remain unanswered as the director of the NHS in Hampshire said he is ‘working closely’ with the practice to resolve the ongoing issues.

As previously reported, patients at The Camrose, Gillies, Hackwood and Beggarwood (CGHB) Surgery, which cares for around 42,000 patients in Basingstoke, were unable to book appointments or request repeat prescriptions when the website and app were taken down following concerns about a possible data breach. 

The matter was reported by Operose Health, which runs the surgery group, to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) in September and it was later confirmed that an investigation had not found any breach of data.

READ MORE: GP surgery apologises for system outage after criticisms over 'poor communication'

However, questions remain unanswered as to why the website and app are still not working more than a month later.

CGHB Surgery’s patient participation group (PPG) said it has been “somewhat underwhelmed by the lack of communication from the CGHB management to its patients” and said questions remain unanswered, including why the practice website and all other Operose websites are down and why the Dr.iQ app was withdrawn.

James Roach, primary care director at NHS Hampshire and Isle of Wight said it is now working with the practice to resolve the issue.

He added: “We are aware of the issue affecting the Dr IQ service and understand the frustration felt by many patients. We are working closely with the practice and Operose and are committed to resolving the issue as soon as possible.

“We can assure patients that the practice has put in place additional call handling and appointment management capacity while these issues are being resolved.”

He met with Councillor Kim Taylor, a Labour Councillor representing Basingstoke Central Division and Labour group leader at Hampshire County Council, who criticised Operose for its poor communication with patients regarding the issues.

Mr Roach added: “We have been engaging with the practice to ensure that they update their patients on the current situation and that they do so on a regular basis and ultimately resolve this issue in a timely way.”

The PPG said it understood that the outage had affected the whole of Operose, leading to “the abrupt withdrawal of the Dr.iQ app just as it was becoming a useful and trusted tool”.

The practice said it is releasing a ‘new and improved’ Dr.iQ app, which patients will have to download.

The PPG said: “Can we really trust the new version of Dr.iQ when it is released without understanding why the original was withdrawn with such haste?”

It added: “We know some of our local elected county council officials have been in contact with the local Integrated Care Board (ICB) to try to gain an understanding of the situation and we plan to keep you informed if we get any news.

“Obviously, because of the above the practice phone lines have been very busy with waits of over an hour in some circumstances and promised call backs sometimes not happening. We plan to raise this with the practice during our next meeting in early December.”

Operose has not yet responded to a request for a comment.