Exclusive EMIS has decided to postpone maintenance planned for today following concerns raised by GPs about increased demand after the bank holiday.
Optum, the company that acquired EMIS in 2023, told GP practices last Wednesday that it would perform ‘essential maintenance’ impacting EMIS Web and EMIS-X over lunchtime on Tuesday 27 May.
Last week GPs told Pulse the timing of this maintenance was ‘massively inconvenient’ and would ‘directly impact patient care’ due to the high demand expected on the day following a bank holiday.
They said this maintenance should have been planned for evenings or weekends, as is the case in other sectors such as banking.
Following the concerns, Optum informed GPs on Friday that in a ‘change to previously communicated plans’, the maintenance was postponed and the company apologised for ‘any confusion’.
The maintenance would have meant the EMIS-X companion app and the EMIS Web search and reporting functionality were unavailable for up to an hour.
Optum had told Pulse that it would affect only ‘non-essential services’ rather than any of the ‘essential systems GPs rely upon’.
The company’s update to GPs on Friday, seen by Pulse, said: ‘In a change to previously communicated plans, your organisation will no longer be receiving essential maintenance for EMIS Web and EMIS-X on Tuesday 27 May between the hours of 12:00 and 14:00.
‘Please accept our apologies for any confusion this may cause. We will notify you as usual when the maintenance work is rescheduled for your organisation.’
A spokesperson for Optum UK told Pulse that they ‘carefully consider the impact’ any system maintenance may have on GP practices and their patients.
‘Despite being confident that the work planned yesterday would not cause any impact to the essential systems GPs rely on, we took the decision to reschedule to a later date,’ they added.
Doctors’ Association UK GP spokesperson Dr Steve Taylor told Pulse: ‘GPs are grateful that the planned maintenance updates for today were postponed. Any updates should not be made during normal working hours, if there is a chance, however small, that systems might be affected.
‘It is vital that patient care is prioritised and this includes the systems that support staff in providing care. Picking one of the busiest days and times was never a great idea.’
EMIS was bought by US healthcare giant UnitedHealth – which functions as Optum in the UK – for £1.2bn in 2023, after the deal was cleared by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority.
Last year, a global IT outage affected the EMIS system which caused disruption at a ‘majority’ of GP practices in England.
