Betsi Cadwaladr GP surgery websites — North Wales, Cymraeg first.

The BCUHB footprint, as patients actually experience it

BCUHB is geographically larger than any other Welsh Health Board and the only one whose patient list spans the linguistic spectrum from majority-Welsh communities in the west to majority-English ones in the east. A practice in Caernarfon, Bangor or Pwllheli has a substantially Welsh-speaking list; a practice in Wrexham, Buckley or Connah's Quay does not. A practice in Rhyl or Colwyn Bay sits in the middle. The website needs to reflect that reality — not pick one and ignore the other.

Our default BCUHB build is fully bilingual at /en/ and /cy/, one-click toggle on every page, and configurable so that the default landing language matches the practice's actual list. You tell us at onboarding which language is the everyday working language of your practice; we set the defaults accordingly. Patients can override on every visit.

Why HIW pays attention here

BCUHB has been through several rounds of Welsh Government targeted intervention and special measures since 2015 — most recently re-escalated in 2023. The clinical and operational context is well known. Less well known is the practical effect on primary-care contract management: Health Board primary care teams, working under sustained external scrutiny, look more carefully at the markers Healthcare Inspectorate Wales tends to comment on. Patient-facing digital is one of those markers.

HIW expects your accountable GP, your complaints process (Putting Things Right), your patient participation group, your accessibility statement and your urgent-message route to all be present, current and bilingual. The Public Services Ombudsman for Wales, not PHSO, is the final-tier complaints route — getting that wrong on a Welsh site is a compliance flag. We build every BCUHB site with all of those in place from day one.

NHS Wales App, properly signposted

My Health Online was decommissioned for most Welsh GP practices by 31 March 2024. The NHS Wales App, run by Digital Health and Care Wales, is now the patient-facing app. BCUHB practices on Vision are migrating to EMIS Web during the 2025-26 contract year on a DHCW-led programme. That migration affects what patients can do via the App during the switchover window. Our admin tool lets you stage pre-migration, transition and post-migration messages and switch them on your confirmed dates — patients see one consistent message at any moment, not a half-updated site.

Local references we get right by default

Out-of-hours: 111 Wales (111.wales.nhs.uk). Secondary care: Ysbyty Gwynedd in Bangor, Ysbyty Glan Clwyd in Bodelwyddan, Wrexham Maelor in Wrexham — referenced where clinically relevant, not as a wall of links. Tertiary referrals: Liverpool (Walton, Aintree, Alder Hey) for North-East patients, Manchester for some specialties, Cardiff for others. Mental health: BCUHB's CMHTs and CAMHS structures. We won't drown your patients in links — we'll signpost the ones they actually need.

Where we are right now in BCUHB

Practice Digital is a new company. We launched in 2026. We are early in our paid-customer journey across BCUHB and welcome practices vetting us through their Cluster Lead or LMC representative before signing anything. Our pilot practices have draft sites available for review. £399 per year flat, locked for five years. No 12-month contract beyond the first year — 30 days' notice thereafter. Practice Digital Web Ltd is the legal entity.

Frequently asked questions

Why does Welsh-language provision matter more in BCUHB than elsewhere in Wales?

BCUHB covers the local authorities with the highest Welsh-speaker density in Wales. Gwynedd reported 64.4% Welsh-speakers in the 2021 Census; Anglesey reported 55.8%. By comparison the Wales-wide figure is 17.8%. For BCUHB practices in those western counties, a Welsh-language website is not a courtesy — it is the language a majority or near-majority of your patient list actively uses. Even practices in Wrexham or Flintshire (where Welsh-speaker density is lower) sit inside a Health Board whose Standards obligations cover the whole footprint.

Does BCUHB being in escalation status affect how our website is judged?

Indirectly, yes. BCUHB has been through several rounds of Welsh Government targeted intervention and special measures since 2015. Practical effect: contract managers and primary care leads have been under particular scrutiny on quality and compliance markers — including patient-facing digital. Practices with visibly out-of-date or non-bilingual websites attract more attention than they would in a non-escalated Health Board.

Do you have BCUHB-specific references?

Practice Digital is owned and operated by a working NHS GP who is a BCUHB Cluster Lead in North Wales. The team is small and based here. We are early in our paid-customer journey across BCUHB — happy to talk references on a one-to-one basis, including by introducing you to practices we have built draft sites for. If you would prefer to vet us through your Cluster Lead first, that is also welcome.

How do you handle bilingual content for a practice in Wrexham versus one in Caernarfon?

The structure is the same — full Welsh and English mirror, every page. What differs is which language a patient lands on by default from a Welsh-speaker postcode versus a non-Welsh-speaker postcode, and what the practice tells us about its actual patient-list language profile. A Caernarfon practice typically wants Welsh as the default landing language with English one click away; a Wrexham practice typically wants English default. Both options are configurable per practice.

Will you cover the rural North Wales geography in the website's NHS-content side?

Yes. The out-of-hours signposting for rural BCUHB (111 Wales), the Ysbyty Gwynedd / Wrexham Maelor / Glan Clwyd hospital references where clinically appropriate, the Cardiff and Liverpool tertiary-referral context for specific specialties, and the practical reality of patients travelling significant distances for some services — all that local context is part of how we draft the site, not bolted on afterwards.