Patient care will not be affected by an NHS decision to pull a doctors' appraisal website offline to improve its security, but the life of UK doctors will be complicated. The return of the NHS Appraisal Toolkit, which provides an online database that allows NHS doctors to prepare for their annual appraisals, is not due until 3 March.
The removal of the resource means the assessment of the performance of 27,000 hospital doctors and GPs who use it will almost certainly be delayed, the GP who was the first to tell us that the site had been laid low explained.

"There is no back-up for those doctors using the system," the family doctor, who asked not to be named, explained. "They have been told they can phone the helpline and have their forms emailed to them (but not to their appraisers). Some but not many may have local copies on their desktops. Otherwise, it's a question of trying to get the info and keeping your fingers crossed."

The timing of the closure coincides with the run-up to appraisal deadlines for many doctors, so it could hardly have come at a worse time for many medics.

"Deadlines are technically fluid, but there is a contractual obligation for GPs to engage in a Primary Care Trust's appraisal process, which would normally run from April to March," the doctor explained.

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