Newsletter January 2024

 

Introducing Anima - our new appointment enquiry service

We are pleased to announce an update to our triage service. On Monday 4th March 2024, we will be introducing ‘Anima’, a new system that will replace our Online Request Form.

Anima seamlessly and confidentially integrates with your medical record bringing improvements to how you access care and appointments and how our staff assess your condition. Anima allows our Clinical Triage Team to continue to improve access times by helping us to direct you to the most appropriate care for your medical needs. This ensures we make use of our limited resources in the most safe and efficient way. All appointments will continue to be offered according to clinical urgency and need.

Your request will be handled in exactly the same manner whether you complete the Anima request online yourself, or contact us via telephone, where our receptionists will ask the same questions to ensure equity of access for all patients. We would encourage all patients who can do so to use Anima, as this will prevent you needing to queue on the telephone and keep lines free for those who do not have internet access. Completing an Anima request yourself also provides you with more discretion should you prefer not to discuss your medical problem with one of our receptionists.

What are the benefits to me as a patient?

As a patient you will benefit from:

  • Being able to log on to see the status and outcomes of your current and past requests.
  • You will be asked questions based on your issues (asked without medical jargon)
  • You can use the system in a number of languages
  • Your medical records will be more complete for the future
  • The practice responses will be clearer
  • You will receive a text message and email to let you know when the practice has responded
  • You can provide all the information that the practice needs without waiting on the phone

What are the benefits to the practice?

As a practice, Woodcote Medical will benefit from:

  • We will see your request in a clear structured format
  • We will be able to save all the information about your requests in a structured way into your medical records – this will help staff when looking at your records for this episode of care or in the future
  • As patients can see the status of their request, we should get less duplicates that clog up the system
  • Your requests will be clear to understand at first glance, so the team will be able to allocate correct people, thus making our turn around more efficient
  • Your requests will come into our system with a Red, Amber, Green rating with clear information about what responses have triggered the rating. This will allow the team to focus on any urgent requests
  • We will be able to provide clearer responses due to the way that Anima builds the response as we perform actions. These responses will be safer as well as it will be secured behind a log in.

Over the next few weeks we will be providing patients with further information on Anima and instructions for how to sign up to the secure service.

anima

anima

Submit a medical or admin request online and get the help you need - without waiting for an appointment.

Submit a request

 

New Phlebotomy Booking Service for St George's Hospital & Community Blood Clinics

To provide a COVID-19 safe service with immediate effect, St George's blood test service is available as a pre-booked service only.

They are moving a to new appointment booking service as of December 2023 which will allow patients to book not only online, but also using an automated telephone booking line by calling 020 3376 8776.

You will need to set up an account online. Before attending, please ensure that you have either booked an appointment, or an appointment has been booked on your behalf. 

Please note: if your blood test was requested through your GP Surgery, then you must attend with a blood form, or your blood test cannot be taken.

 

DNA Rates - December 2023

There is great pressure on appointment availability and to keep our waiting times to a minimum, we need to reduce the number of patients who do not attend (DNA). In December, we offered 5375 appointments, of which 5.2% were DNA'd. By clinician type, this breaks down as:

  • Nurse Appointments - 11.4% DNAs
  • HCA Appointments - 8.1% DNAs
  • Physios - 7.9% DNAs
  • Paramedic - 6.1% DNAs
  • Pharmacists - 5% DNAs
  • Advanced Nurse Practitioners - 4.5% DNAs
  • GPs - 2.4% DNAs

If these patients had let us know that they were unable to attend their appointment, we would have been able to rebook these appointments for other patients who needed them.  If you are unable to attend, please cancel your appointment 24 hours in advance either by phone or online - thank you.

 

Lung Health Check Text Message

Some patients aged between 55 to 74 are currently receiving text messages offering a free NHS lung health check.

Please note that this is not a scam. South West London are sending these messages out to patients either with a history of smoking or those without a recorded smoking status, with the aim of increasing lung cancer diagnoses at an early stage.

The lung health check, will take place by telephone, and will be carried out by a health care advisor. It includes a brief consultation covering respiratory symptoms, past medical and smoking history, and the calculation of two lung cancer risk scored based on this information.

Published: Jan 1, 2024