Anima is an NHS approved third party platform that allows patients to communicate with their surgery, handling both clinical and administrative queries.

Anima seamlessly and confidentially integrates with your medical record bringing improvements on 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.

All patients will need to register online to be able to use Anima. Patients will no longer be able to get an appointment by coming into the practice or calling on the telephone, this will keep lines free for those who do not have internet access and are most vulnerable. 

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. (NHS Login links to Anima).
• 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

Anima requires each patient to create an online account. All you need for this is an email address. It is a very short, simple process. You can also add dependants to your account who don’t have email i.e. Children, Vulnerable Patients.

Watch the short Anima YouTube video on how to sign up

Click Here To Sign Up

Finding the right surgery 

You will need to select your practice 'Higham Ferrers Surgery'.  

Note: Anima is used via the internet an App is not available at the moment and nor is this system linked to your NHS App other than your log in.

Adding children/dependant accounts

Requests need to be submitted under the right profile. If you have children or dependants, you need to create them a dependant account within your profile. Click on ‘Settings’ from the Anima homepage. 

Watch the short Anima YouTube video on how to added a dependant

Anima have listened to feedback from patients, and you can now have dependants on multiple accounts, so for example Mum and Dad could submit and view requests for children. Both parents can add themselves to the account. It may take up to two working days to be approved.

Vulnerable Patients and patients without Internet access

Our reception team are always happy to help.

Vulnerable patients have already been identified within the practice (who will be contacted by the practice). The reception team are able to submit requests on behalf of those patients, who will then call them back to inform them of the outcome of their request.

If you wish to contact the Practice for an appointment, have a clinical or adminitrative related request you will need to undertake this via Anima.

Watch the short Anima YouTube video on how to submit requests.

It is important that you input as much information as possible to enable the Doctor to source you the best advice albeit an appointment or a prescription. Whilst the questions appear lengthy, the quality of the information will help the Doctor when dealing with your query.

We respond to Anima requests based on clinical priority, with the vast majority of clinical requests receiving a response same day or next day, in a variety of ways, including telephone and video consultations as well as text message replies.

If it’s clear from your Anima request that an examination is required we will contact you for a face to face appointment.

General Practice across the country is in crisis with the increase in demand.  In the last two years our registered patient list has significantly increased and we recognise the challenges this brings. As you may be aware, employing salaried GPs has been very difficult for General Practice and we have to be innovative in the way we deliver our services.

Our Care Navigation Team work hard to answer your calls in a timely manner and this is becoming more and more difficult at peak times despite being adequately resourced. 

We appreciate that change might be difficult for some patients and our vulnerable patients will not be disadvantaged by this new system. We all need to get used to the new way of interacting with the Practice and we ask that you are kind to our Care Navigation Team as we go live on the 13th February.

Every Anima triage is reviewed by a member of your GP team and assigned to a clinical or administrative team best placed to handle your request. 

We respond to Anima requests based on clinical priority, with the vast majority of clinical requests receiving a response same day or next day, in a variety of ways, including telephone and video consultations as well as text message replies. If it’s clear from your Anima request that an examination is required we will contact you for a face to face appointment.

By working in this way we ensure our GPs have sufficient capacity to see the patients that can only be dealt with by a GP.

We do expect our patients to use Anima responsibly, and we do place limits on how it will operate to ensure the safety of our patients and the partnership:

• We expect patients will, whenever appropriate, try to self help and speak to their pharmacist for advice and over the counter medication, before contacting the surgery.
• We will signpost patients to more appropriate services whenever appropriate, such as their pharmacy, local NHS physiotherapy etc.
• There is a limit on the number of Anima requests you can have live with the practice at one time. 
• We will not limit the number of requests that patients can submit per month, but at our discretion where we feel a patient is overusing Anima we will propose a meeting to discuss how we can better support their care.
• We expect communications via Anima to be polite and constructive. 
• We keep Anima available throughout the day for the convenience of our patients, however at certain times we will turn it off to ensure continued clinical safety. This includes Bank Holidays and internal training events. We will provide as much notice as possible prior to these events, and direct patients to 111 for immediate clinical assessment when Anima is unavailable.