In light of the COVID-19 outbreak, we’ve been working with the Surrey Heartlands team to support the delivery of the Attend Anywhere video triage service at pace.

Attend Anywhere enables patients to be seen by clinicians in a virtual clinic. The Surrey Heartlands team was already working on rolling out the innovation, but it soon became clear that extra support was needed to speed this up in light of COVID-19.

Over the past three weeks we’ve been able to help Surrey Heartlands to do just that by providing programme management support to the community trusts and mental health provider and exploring ongoing evaluation. The next phase of work will include developing a co-produced future operating model across the system.

Attend Anywhere is now being used across all of Surrey Heartlands’ secondary, community and mental health providers, which will not only help to quickly embed the service during the current situation, but should also make it easier to develop more seamless services in the future.

Anita Randon, Programme Director (New Care Models) at Surrey Heartlands said Attend Anywhere was proving to be a great success:

“Patients and clinicians alike love the simplicity of Attend Anywhere. We’ve established a collaborative group to support the scaling up and rolling out of the platform, and to share creative uses. The solution is now being used in acute, community and mental health care settings across Surrey Heartlands.”

Patients have been reporting that the system is easy to use, saves time on travelling and parking. Another added: “I have to say that I was a little anxious about the video call as I have never done this before, but I will definitely be happy to do it again when needed, it was so east and so much less hassle, and the physiotherapist was absolutely brilliant! Definitely a 10/10 from me for this service. Thank you!”

Athina Lockyer, Programme Manager with KSS AHSN, has been supporting Surrey Heartlands with the work, and highlighted the range of uses for the technology.

“Trials in other areas of the South East have shown that Attend Anywhere can be used for a range of cases, and we’re seeing similarly positive results for its use within recruitment, video consultations and dementia support, to name just a few.”

Find out more: Rheanna.mitchell@nhs.net Head of Planned Care Commissioning