IT (Clinical) systems Merger

We are merging the IT (Clinical) systems of Dashwood Medical Centre with Northdown Surgery. This will be done on the 1st September 2025.

Northdown Surgery and Dashwood Medical Centre have been working as sister practices since 28th August 2023. This will not change, neither will the staff you see on your visit.

As part of this, Dashwood Medical Centre and Northdown Surgery will continue to work as sister surgeries and both sites will remain open, but will allow us to make the IT systems as one. The reason for this is so we can share systems and processes across our sites to make the practice more efficient. Currently our team have to run a number of computer systems alongside each other, which is proving more and more difficult, and is not an efficient use of resources. This is particularly difficult and time consuming, especially for booking patients in for their appointments. Once the systems are merged, there would be just one computer system for all patients.

Patients will see no change to their services other than being able to deal with your queries more quickly. We are committed to ensuring that continuity of care is retained for patients with ongoing health care issues as we know that this is important to you, and good for patient care. As a practice, we have a commitment to ensure we meet the needs of the local community and listen to the views of our patients. This change will happen between 29th August 2025 and the 2nd September 2025. During this time our computer systems will not be able to be accessed.

Please make sure that any medicines that may be due for review at this time are requested in advance. The change is scheduled to be completed on 2 nd September 2025.

Online service user access: Apps switched off – 28th August 2025

Online services at Dashwood Medical Centre, will be switched off, ahead of the merger of IT systems. If you try to use your normal Apps ie NHS Apps, MyGP etc during this time, they will not work and will give an error code that starts with 3c. As patient transfer will be in progress, we will also not be able to help with this during this period.

Anima

The Anima system will also be unavailable to ensure no requests are overlooked or missed throughout the transition period. We will work with our system partners to ensure the Anima system is available again as soon as possible. You will still be able to contact the surgery directly during this period via phone or in-person. After the merge on 2nd September 2025 Online service access for the transferred patients will not be immediately available and may take until the end of the month to setup. We will text you when the apps are ready to be reused. Please give us until the 15th September 2025 to instruct you on how to access your app.

Please contact us if you have any questions or queries.

Kind Regards,

Dashwood Medical Centre & Northdown Surgery

Published: Aug 11, 2025