The Digital Age is a wonderful thing!
The traditional model of seeking medical help is to be referred to a hospital specialist after seeing a general practitioner, getting into a car and driving to the hospital where you pay a parking fee and sit in a waiting room until one hour after your planned outpatient appointment time before being seen.
Sussex Sleep Services has blown that model out of the water!
Now patients can be seen from the comfort of their own homes by video link. Our specialist takes a medical history to help diagnose your sleep problem. If you need investigations, these are carried out within the confines of your bedroom, giving clinical data which enables us to make an accurate diagnosis.
Even when it comes to treatment you don’t have to leave your home! If you need a CPAP device this is sent to you and set up remotely by our partners ResMed UK. Recommendations for drug treatments can be sent directly to your general practitioner, and clinical psychology can be accessed for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for insomnia (CBTi) by video link.
Furthermore it does not matter where you live in the UK or even beyond! Digital technology enables you to access our experts from any part of the globe and benefit from our expertise and recommendations for treatment. What could be better!
As well as the advantage of convenience to the patient, it is good for the environment. In 2018 we opened a local clinic at Arundel surgery which was 45 miles from the base hospital in East Grinstead. There, NHS patients were seen and the specialist travelled to the patients rather than the patients travelling to the specialist. Accessing data from the DVLA website and some simple arithmetic showed that within the first three months three tonnes (3000Kg) of carbon dioxide emissions had been saved with one family car travelling to Arundel rather than multiple cars travelling to the base hospital. Utterly sustainable.
Sussex Sleep Services is forward thinking and at the forefront of using technology for the convenience of patients. We aim to turn around an outpatient appointment within one week of contact by the patient, and for us speed and efficiency are at the heart of what we do!