Anima Frequently Asked Questions

GP practices are experiencing significant strain with declining GP numbers and increasing demand. Ensuring that patients are seen by the appropriate clinician in the right place and at the right time means that patient care and experience is improved, and it reduces pressure on GP practices, allowing GPs to spend their time where it is most needed. This approach is supported by NHS England who have advised that GP surgeries should provide digital triage to their patients.

Anima allows your GP to get to your consultation or requests much faster than traditional methods. The biggest benefit is that these changes will mean there will be no more “8am rush” to queue on the telephones or queue at the surgery. No matter what time you contact us all our appointments will be prioritised by our clinical team based on medical urgency.

Anima is approved by the NHS and works with your GP practice in order to enable us to provide you with care. We sign specific agreements to let us do this, and only collect data that we need in order to make this happen.

All requests for GP appointments will go through Anima for clinical triaging before an appointment is offered. The quickest and easiest way to submit a request is online, but you can still telephone the surgery or come into reception if you wish. The reception team will input your request into Anima on your behalf and you will then be contacted later that day or, for non-urgent requests, a few days later with a notification of an outcome or offer of an appointment.

We aim to have Anima open from 7am Monday to 4pm Friday every week, excluding public holidays. Occasionally we may have to close Anima early, see below for more details.

On some days, demand for a GP appointment far outweighs the safe capacity we can provide. On these days, we may have to turn Anima off early because we are full. If you have an emergency in these situations, please call the reception team who will be happy to help. Remember there are out of hours services available when we close, including 111 and 999.

We aim to respond to all medical queries the same day where possible. Some more routine queries may take us a few days to get back to you. You can always check the status of your query via your Anima dashboard.

Our reception team are always happy to help! They are able to submit requests for you and can call you back to inform you of the outcome of your request and book you in for the necessary appointment.

You can submit a question as an Admin request via Anima and we will respond to you as soon as possible. If you don’t have a smart phone or internet access, then speaking directly with reception is also an option.

Digital triage means that requests are prioritised in order of need. All requests will be looked at by a GP on the same day where possible and the level of care decided at that point. This means that patients will be seen at the right time and by the right person. By triaging, we give priority to the most poorly of our patients.

Absolutely! During your sign-up process, we will ask you for both an email address and a mobile phone number. This is so we can let you know when your doctor has made a decision regarding the request you have submitted.

But don’t worry if you do not have a mobile phone we will simply use your email address to notify you. If you don’t have an email address either, then we will telephone you on your landline.

To help us with patient identification and to ensure that information sent to you by your GP practice remains secure, each account created with Anima needs to be related to a unique email address. However, one user can register and then add another user as their dependant. This means that the ‘primary’ user will be able to submit Anima requests on behalf of the dependant account.

No, requests for repeat prescriptions are best placed via the NHS App. If patients prefer to not use an app, they can request their prescription via their pharmacy or by using our online Prescription Form.

Yes! You can use Anima to request certain nurse appointments, such as smears, blood pressure checks and bloods. These appointments can also be booked by calling reception in the usual way.

Yes! You can specify your preferred clinician at the time of making your request. We will accommodate specific requests wherever we can, although on occasion we may not be able to offer appointments with a clinician of choice if they are away of have no available appointments.

No, Anima is not an app currently. It can only be accessed through the website. The Anima team are working on integration with the NHS app and we will update you when this has happened.

Please sign up to Anima here. You can log into Anima using your NHS app login credentials or create your own unique Anima username and password.

If you need extra support, please head to Anima's Support Centre.

 Alternatively, please ask our reception team, who will be happy to help.