Patients of a local medical practice have been unable to receive prescriptions or book appointments for three days now after the clinic’s computer system experienced a “major outage”.

The system at Kinneil Medical Practice, in the Kinglass Centre, Gauze Road, Bo’ness, has been down since Monday morning.

In a Facebook post on Wednesday, September 2, the practice stated: “We are extremely sorry, but our clinical computer system is still experiencing a major outage. IT teams and system developers are actively working to fix the issue as a matter of urgency.

“We truly appreciate your patience, understanding, and kindness toward our reception team while we work through this difficult situation. We will post further updates as soon as the system is restored.”

The computer system at the practice has been out of action since Monday morning (Picture: Submitted)

placeholder image — The computer system at the practice has been out of action since Monday morning (Picture: Submitted)

The Falkirk Herald tried to contact Kinneil Medical Practice to find out when the system would be fixed. However, the newspaper was placed on hold for over half-an-hour with a message stating the practice was experiencing “higher than normal call volumes”.

Back in July Kinneil Medical Practice closed its reception “until further notice”, stating this was due to a “staff shortage”.

Patients with pre-scheduled appointments were advised to use the “self check-in screen” on arrival, and if the display is out of use, take a seat and a member of staff will call you when ready.

Those scheduled for prescription collection were told they can now only attend between 11am and noon, or from 4pm until 5pm.

The current medical practice came into being back in October 2023 when Kinglass Medical Practice and Forth View Practice combined.

It was stated at the time both practices had been “struggling with delivering services safely as a smaller unit” and “struggling to recruit new doctors into these smaller units”.

In 2023, a spokesperson for the new Kinneil Medical Practice said: “We recognise small practices are not sustainable in the future and that by the two practices coming together we can ensure we attract high quality GPs and staff to Kinneil Medical Practice enabling ongoing provision of medical services to the town.

"We want to avoid a situation where struggling practices are handed over to other GP providers. We will have to work out of both the Health Centre and Kinglass Centrefor the foreseeable future as funding for new premises has been put on hold by the Scottish Government.

"We do not have space on either site for the whole practice and will be working differently over the two sites, with the Kinglass Centre used for same day

appointments plus physio and mental health and Forth View covering routine appointments and prescription requests.

“The whole team at Kinneil are very excited about this change as we recognise we can restart delivering a better model of care than the two practices can currently offer. We will be looking at reviewing more conditions annually and providing more access for medication reviews as a starter.

“We recognise this will affect all patients and staff and we hope that we can all work effectively together to ensure a smooth transition.”