A doctors’ surgery is preparing to undergo a major IT upgrade as part of a countywide technology drive.

Patients at the Wigton Group Medical Practice could experience some disruption from Wednesday (DEC 2) until December 14 as work is carried out on the new computer system.

It will mean the number of routine appointments between those dates will be reduced. However, bosses at the practice say that people who need urgent appointments will be seen.

Extra appointments have been scheduled for Monday and Tuesday as a way to give more opportunities for patients to be seen.

The new system is being pushed by the Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and will mean the practice in South End, along with the other surgeries in the county, will be using the same system.

It will allow the security of patients’ data to be future-proofed.

Senior partner Dr John Honeyman added: “Community staff like district nurses, physios and occupational therapists also use the same type of software. So it will allow us to have better integration with other healthcare professionals.”

Some patients have already been issued with double quantities of repeat medication with the practice unable to accept routine repeat prescription requests between Monday and December 9.

The system is due to go live on December 8 and the NHS 111 out of hours service will be operating as normal throughout.

Patients registered to use online services will not be able to access the service from Wednesday and will receive information on how to re-register for the new system.

The upgrade project will be the first major project undertaken by practice manager Lynn Singleton.