While making improvements to our appointment reminder service, a small number of patients received an incorrect text message stating that their face-to-face appointment would be a telephone appointment.

This happened because the new reminder settings had not been fully configured before the messages were sent. We want to reassure patients that this was solely a configuration error on our part. The issue was identified and corrected very quickly.

We can confirm that there was no data breach, our systems were not hacked, and no third party gained unauthorised access to any patient information.

We sincerely apologise to the patients affected and for any confusion or concern caused.

Following feedback from patients and our Patient Participation Group, patients attending Harefield Surgery will now receive appointment reminders three days before and again the day before their appointment.

Although external funding for this service has been withdrawn, the practice has decided to fund it directly because patients have told us how valuable reminders are in helping them attend their appointments.

The improved service will also allow patients to cancel or request to rearrange their appointment if their plans change, helping us offer unused appointments to other patients.

We hope patients find these improvements helpful. Once again, we are sorry for any confusion caused by the initial settings error.

The Harefield Practice