GPs have raised concerns about EMIS IT system maintenance planned for the day after the bank holiday, which is typically the ‘busiest day’ for practice workload.
Optum, the company that acquired EMIS in 2023, warned GP practices today that it will perform ‘essential maintenance’ impacting EMIS Web and EMIS-X over lunchtime on Tuesday 27 May.
This will mean that any searches performed using the ‘search and reporting’ functionality during the two-hour period will need to be ‘rerun manually’.
GPs told Pulse the timing of this maintenance is ‘massively inconvenient’ and will ‘directly impact patient care’ due to the high demand expected on the day following a bank holiday.
But Optum said in response that maintenance will be carried out on only ‘non-essential services’ and will not impact the ‘essential systems GPs rely upon’.
The notification sent to practices from Optum said: ‘On Tuesday 27 May 2025, we will be performing some essential maintenance which will impact EMIS Web and EMIS-X between 12:00 and 14:00.
‘Between the hours of 12:00 and 14:00, the EMIS-X companion app and Search & Reporting functionality in EMIS Web may be unavailable for a period of up to one hour.
‘Please note, any immediate searches will need to be rerun manually, all other scheduled searches will rerun automatically after the maintenance is complete, at their next scheduled run time or once reset automatically.
‘We appreciate your understanding whilst we perform this essential maintenance, and we apologise for the short notice.’
EMIS-X is used by GP practices in England and allows staff to ‘quickly navigate patient records and information’ alongside EMIS Web during consultations, according to the Optum website.
And the search and reporting functionality enables practices to use their data to ‘review performance, manage audits and evaluate population health’.
In response to the planned maintenance, Professor Sir Sam Everington, a GP in Tower Hamlets, said it is ‘very worrying’ that Optum do not seem to have a ‘basic understanding’ of general practice.
He told Pulse: ‘The day after a bank holiday is always the busiest day in general practice in terms of workload, not a time for GP IT system to be doing maintenance.
‘This should be done at weekends or on lower activity days, as is the practice in the world of business and commerce.’
GP and Doctors’ Association UK spokesperson Dr Steve Taylor highlighted that there will be in excess of 600,000 patient consultations on Tuesday in EMIS practices.
He said: ‘There is never a good time for maintenance of IT systems during the working hours. EMIS have probably chosen one of the worst times possible.
‘Most industries time maintenance during downtimes, e.g. evenings or weekends. Banks do this at weekends or over night.
‘There is still time for this to be rescheduled and hopefully they will listen to concerns of GP practices.’
Gateshead and South Tyneside LMC chair Dr Paul Evans said: ‘It’s massively inconvenient and will directly impact patient care on what is likely to be a busy day – predictably so, as post-bank holiday days always are.
‘This is clearly for the convenience of the company and not those who use EMIS, nor their patients.’
A spokesperson for Optum UK said: ‘The maintenance planned for Tuesday 27th May will be carried out on non-essential services only and will not impact any of the essential systems GPs rely upon.’
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.
