Dear Patients;
Many of you will be aware that our Practice experienced issues with our telephone line this morning, and we wanted to provide you with an update on what happened and why, and what was done about it.
NHS Grampian have been migrating Primary Care telephone numbers from TalkTalk to Gamma in order to provide a better and more cost effective solution for the sustainability of Primary Care. Our Practice was one of the last to migrate, some 50 Practices had previously migrated with no issues, and we had set up the test sites some 6 weeks prior. Everything was working well and we had complied with NHS Grampian’s guidance for the move. The number was supposed to move between 00:00 and 04:00 this morning. This morning, however, it became apparent that something was wrong; and NHSG’s subsequent investigation showed that TalkTalk had not released the correct data to Gamma and so we had to wait until both TalkTalk and Gamma engineers fixed the problem.
NHS Grampian provided us with a temporary number which we advertised on Facebook and our Website; and this gave our patients access to a telephone line in the interim. The issue was fixed around 12:57 and we advertised this on our media platforms. Prior to this we took the steps to advertise through Facebook, our Website, and a Practice SMS to all of our patients in order to keep people apprised of the situation.
The reason that the service provider is being changed is to do with value for money: TalkTalk charge the Practice 0.5p per minute for every call received; and Gamma charge nothing and so it made no sense to stay with TalkTalk. We also have a much better telephone facility for tracking and logging calls which will help with the provision of audits.
We are not able to change anything when the phone lines go down, and are reliant on NHS Grampian to fix issues. This issue was new to us, and getting a temporary line from NHSG is outwith the normal planning and contingencies that we would ordinarily use. Although the matter was outwith our control we would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused.
