Is your GP practice affected by the Silicon Practice going into administration? Here’s what to do next

If your GP practice has been affected by the recent uncertainty and disruption surrounding the loss of your web provider, firstly please don’t panic and don’t feel that you need to solve everything at once.

We can only imagine how difficult this situation must be for Practice Managers and their teams. When a practice website suddenly becomes unavailable, it’s much more than an IT issue. It can disrupt an important connection between the practice and its patients, particularly when people rely on it to understand how and where to access care.

Understandably, the immediate reaction may be to find a replacement and get everything back up and running as quickly as possible.

Our advice is simpler:

Stabilise first. Understand what you've lost. Then make the long-term decision.

1. Start with what your patients need today

If your website has suddenly become unavailable, your immediate priority doesn't necessarily need to be building another complete website.

The first step may be much simpler - get a temporary page online containing the essential information your patients need today.

That might include:

• practice contact details and opening hours;

• how to access appointments and services;

• prescription and fit note information;

• urgent and out-of-hours information;

• key patient information; and

• links to NHS services and any other systems that are still available.

Then take stock of which existing patient journeys and services are still working and which have been affected.

The immediate goal is continuity, not perfection.

A straightforward temporary solution that keeps patients informed can give your practice valuable breathing room, without rushing into a complete website rebuild or committing to a new long-term supplier under pressure.

2. Understand exactly what has been affected

This is particularly important because what patients see as “the website” may only be one part of the practice's digital service.

Silicon Practice describes FootFall as part of its wider patient-access offering and says more than 1,000 GP practices use its FootFall dashboard.

So before commissioning a replacement website, identify exactly what your practice was relying on.

·        Which functionality was part of the public website?

·        Which services were provided separately?

·        What happened to forms and patient journeys?

·        Are there integrations with other clinical or administrative systems?

·        What continues to work independently of the website?

·        Do you have access to your content, domain, analytics and other important digital assets?

You don't want to discover halfway through a website replacement that the original problem was considerably wider than the website itself.

3. Put a safe short-term solution in place

If your existing website cannot be relied upon, you don't necessarily have to solve your entire digital strategy immediately.

There is another option: restore the essentials first.

An interim digital presence can give patients access to important information while your practice properly evaluates what to do next.

The objective should be to restore a dependable digital front door without forcing your team into an immediate long-term commitment.

That creates something very valuable in a situation like this - breathing room.

Your team can then make the next decision based on what is right for the practice rather than simply what can be purchased most quickly.

4. Don't turn this into a technology debate

When a digital service fails, it's tempting for the conversation to become about technology.

Which platform should have been used? Which programming language? Which CMS? Proprietary or open source?

We don't think that's particularly helpful to practices dealing with the immediate problem.

Excellent digital services can be built using many different technologies.

The important questions are bigger:

·        Who controls your domain?

·        Who owns your content and data?

·        Can you obtain a usable copy of them?

·        How is the service hosted and backed up?

·        What happens if your supplier suddenly becomes unavailable?

·        Can another supplier take over without starting again?

·        What security and continuity processes sit behind the service?

Technology matters, of course, but resilience, ownership, governance and support matter just as much.

5. Don't feel pressured into making a long-term decision immediately

When an important supplier suddenly becomes uncertain, the obvious response is to find another specialist provider offering something similar.

For some practices, moving straight to another established healthcare website provider may absolutely be the right answer, but it isn't your only option.

There are actually two decisions to make:

1.        What do we need right now? What needs to be restored so patients can access essential information and services?

2.        What do we want for the next few years? What should our longer-term website and digital ecosystem look like, and what do we expect from the organisation responsible for supporting it?

Those questions may have the same answer, but they don't have to.

If you can restore your essential digital presence safely in the short term, you may be able to give your team the space to evaluate different suppliers and approaches properly.

An emergency decision doesn't have to become a multi-year technology decision.

6. You may not need another “GP website provider”

It's understandable that affected practices might immediately search for another supplier offering a similar service.

And for some practices, a specialist healthcare platform will make perfect sense.

But it's worth stepping back and asking: What do we actually need?

Perhaps you want the website, patient-facing functionality and associated services provided through one specialist platform.

Perhaps you'd prefer different components to be separated, giving you greater flexibility over the public website and specialist healthcare systems.

Perhaps your practice simply needs a better understanding of the available options before deciding.

There isn't a single architecture or technology that is right for every organisation.

The important thing is that your eventual solution is secure, accessible, supportable, resilient and appropriate for the services your patients rely upon.

And crucially, your practice should understand what happens if you ever need to move supplier again.

7. Before choosing your next supplier, ask some difficult questions

Whether you're talking to another specialist GP website company or a technology provider, we'd suggest asking some practical questions.

·        Ownership: Who owns and controls the domain, website, content and data?

·        Flexibility: If we leave in two or five years, what can we take with us, and in what format?

·        Hosting: Where and how is the service hosted?

·        Backups and recovery: What happens if the website or underlying infrastructure becomes unavailable?

·        Security: What accreditations, policies and security processes are in place?

·        Accessibility: How will accessibility be maintained and monitored?

·        Support: How quickly can we speak to someone when something genuinely important goes wrong?

·        Dependencies: What other systems, integrations or proprietary services does the website rely upon?

·        Exit: If the relationship ends for any reason, what happens next?

The answers may tell you considerably more about a potential long-term partner than a list of website features.

8. Think about resilience, not just replacement

Nobody wants to find themselves dealing with this situation, but once the immediate pressure has passed, there is an opportunity to make your practice more resilient for the future.

A good digital setup shouldn't leave important knowledge, access or assets in the hands of only one supplier. You should understand your key dependencies and know how essential patient communication can continue if part of your digital service suddenly becomes unavailable.

A useful question to ask is: If our digital supplier became unavailable tomorrow, could we keep operating?

That doesn't mean you shouldn't rely on external specialists. Good digital partnerships are built on trust and expertise, but your practice should understand who controls the things you would need to keep your digital presence running, or to move it somewhere else.

That includes:

• your domain and DNS access;

• website content and digital assets;

• hosting arrangements;

• backups;

• analytics accounts;

• technical documentation;

• third-party systems and integrations;

• security responsibilities; and

• what happens if you need to move to another supplier.

Changing supplier will rarely be completely painless, but it should be manageable rather than catastrophic.

Ultimately, this isn't just a technology question. It's a business continuity question.

If you're affected and would find it useful to talk through the situation with someone, we're happy to have a conversation about where you are, what your patients need right now and the safest way forward.