To all our patients,
We wanted to update everyone about the ‘Anima’ access system we have at the surgery. We realise some people are unhappy with the new system. We hope it is helpful for us to share with you some of the differences we have noticed since making the change and the reasons we had to make a change.
The simple truth is that our previous access model was not working for patients or doctors. It was causing long delays for appointments, reduced continuity of care, patients being seen in the wrong type of appointment and unmanageable workloads for staff within the practice.
Why were things not as good?
We are busier than ever. We can do more as GPs now, medicine is always advancing, peoples problems are more complex as society ages and more and more is expected out of hospital in GP surgeries. The Winchcombe population is growing. For all these reasons and more, demand on your surgery has sky-rocketed. We estimate that we are seeing 40-50% more patients in 2025 than we were in 2018/9. However, NHS and Government has not increased funding for us. Indeed, we receive less funding in real terms than we did in 2018/19.
Unlike other types of business, more activity does not bring more funding. We can’t raise income by introducing fees or charges (nor do we want to). The NHS caps funding to GPs at around 31p per patient per day on average. This is less than most people pay for their pet insurance. We are given a fixed sum to cover our 8000 patients whether they come in once a year, once a month or every day!
This is why there has been a change. We are not funded to offer the level of service we always used to and would desperately want to.
Why Anima?
Since we only have a finite number of appointments we need to make sure they are used as effectively as possible. Anima helps us ensure those with the greatest need are seen first. When it is safe to wait a bit longer patients are seen by the best person who can help.
Since introducing Anima
- We have been able to reduce the proportion of our daily appointments that are used for urgent problems – many urgent queries are now dealt with by the local pharmacy, the respiratory hub or by email. These released appointments have been converted to routine appointments.
- we have more routine appointments
- the wait for routine appointments has reduced
- we have better continuity of care – we are more often able to get patients to see their usual doctor or the doctor who has been looking after a particular problem
- the wait time on our phone system has reduced significantly
- we are able to arrange useful tests and investigations BEFORE your appointment – this makes your appointment more useful and frequently saves you time waiting for further follow up appointments
We need good information from you to make decisions about your care. We really do encourage you to use the online system. It can seem tedious but it gives your doctor the information they need to give you a speedy and safe response.
No system is perfect, but ‘Anima’ lets the doctors see in detail the nature of your request and how we can best help. That means we can prioritise and ensure urgent things are not missed.
It also frees up our phones for people who need to access us this way. For people who cannot use an online system our reception team are still on hand to help complete the questions over the phone.
We can only safely deal with a limited number of requests a day. We reach ‘capacity’ at some point. The system has to close when we have taken in the maximum safe number of requests we can offer appointments for. Our phone lines are open all day for very urgent contacts that really cannot wait until the next day. We are always working on ways to increase our capacity so that we can keep the system open longer. For instance we have recently set up new skin clinics where we see more patients in shorter appointments. We are hopeful of further investment from NHS England and the Department of Health to allow us to increase staff levels and appointments.
We know that the system is not perfect and that some of our patients find it frustrating. We will continue to try and provide the highest level of care that we can and we remain very grateful for your support.
