Anima - A New Way to Access Same Day Appointments

What is a 'same-day emergency appointment'?

     These are appointments for people with medical conditions that need to be dealt with that same day, as otherwise there would be a risk of the patient coming to harm. 

Our doctors will use the information provided to us via ‘Anima’ and their clinical expertise, to determine safely, if the presenting problem is urgent and the best approach to manage it. 

You may be referred for a NHS community Pharmacist consultation Service by your GP surgery. Catt' s Pharmacy is the closest pharmacy to offer this service. Please contact Catts Pharmacy on this number 01634 242077 as soon as its convenient to arrange an appointment, informing them that your GP Surgery has sent a referral for the ‘NHS Community Pharmacist Consultation Service’.

Why the need for change?

With primary care services being busier than ever, we need a system that ensures we can deal with all same day requests in a safe, structured and timely way.  
Benefits of ‘Anima’ include:

• All requests received before 11am will be dealt with on the same day. 
• You will be able to log on to see the status and outcomes of your requests. (Coming Soon: NHS Login will link to Anima).
• You will receive a clear, easy-to-understand response in a timely manner.
• 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 queuing on the phone.
• This means that our telephone lines will be less busy and more available to people needing non-emergency services.
• Your doctors will have clear information, straight from their patients, about the issues that are worrying them. This will help us to make safe clinical decisions as to how we can best help and enable us to respond to emergency requests efficiently and effectively.

How does Anima work with my NHS record?

Anima seamlessly and confidentially integrates with your medical record. The information that you provide will automatically be copied into your medical record so that our clinicians can not only respond to your request, but look back on what was happening for you at that time, in future consultations, if needed.

Will this have a negative impact on accessing appointments?

No. As a surgery, we are committed to ensuring that we can deal with as many same-day requests as possible – but it is important that we do this in a safe and structured way. All Anima requests will be screened by one of our doctors.

We are very aware that some of our patients may struggle with online services and we will work hard to ensure that these patients are not adversely affected. We will do everything we can to support our patients who may struggle including staff helping with the registration process. To ensure we can do this, we would encourage all patients who can do so to use Anima. This will not only free up the phone lines for those who do not have internet access or may be struggling, but it will prevent you needing to queue on the telephone.

We would like to ask for your patience whilst we change to Anima as we are aware that introducing of any new system may have some teething troubles. However, we have planned the introduction very carefully to minimise any disruption.

How to register / access Anima 

It’s a very simple and straight forward process there are many ways to register.

To register / Access

• Use the link provided on our website 
• Visit Anima website patients.animahealth.com
• Use the QR code which can be found on the Website under ‘How do I’
• Pop down to the surgery and scan the code on the posters that are in the waiting room. 

If you are struggling to register contact the surgery and we can register you over the phone or pop down to the surgery a member of staff will be happy to help. 

More information is available on the Anima website patients.animahealth.com.