Community patients in Guildford and Waverley have been receiving rapid, effectively-targeted care from a "transformational" Community Coordination Centre (CCC) at Milford Hospital that pools the resources of the area’s community services.

The service has been fully operational in Waverley since the end of January and will be handling all calls from the greater Guildford area as soon as the team can be mobilised.

Instead of spending time searching for the right community service for their patients, GPs and ambulance staff now send all their enquiries and referrals to the centre.

Centre staff then ensure patients get rapid access to care from the appropriate community services team. For example, this could be the crisis response team for urgent visits - ensuring a patient is seen within two hours - or other services such as community nursing and therapy services.

All community referrals are processed for planned and unplanned care and co-ordinated for patients.

The CCC ensures all referrals are handed quickly with a clinician managing professional-to-professional conversations.

Crucially, the CCC will never reject a referral but will direct it to the most appropriate service.

"It’s all about making sure people get the right care, at the right time, in the right place by the right person," said Jane Fagan, interim associate director of ops and transformation at the Royal Surrey County Hospital Foundation Trust.

"The CCC is saving hundreds of hours of clinical time which would normally be spent dealing with referrals.

"It releases more time for our clinical staff to provide direct hands-on care for patients."

Staffed by a team of eight, including clinicians and admin staff, the centre is open seven days a week from 8am to 6pm and has been developed without any additional funding.

The Waverley district nurse hub is now based within the CCC and soon will be joined by district nurses from the Jarvis Centre in Guildford.

Community GP David Triska, based at the Whitley Surgery, said the new CCC had been "transformational" in the services offered to patients, and the reassurance it gives to NHS staff working in the community.

"I no longer worry if I’m going to be able to get the community care my patients need, or have to spend hours battling for it," he said.

"We have seen a complete culture change where we now feel fully supported in our clinical decision making and part of a wider community health and social care structure.

"One family quite literally shed tears of happiness that they no longer had to spend hours on the phone fighting to get the care their loved one obviously needed."

The Royal Surrey County Hospital in Guildford is a leading general hospital and specialist centre for cancer services and treatment. It serves a population of 320,000 for emergency and general hospital services.

St Luke’s Cancer Centre serves 1.3 million people for cancer services across Hampshire, Surrey and West Sussex.

The Royal Surrey has an annual income of £347 million and employs around 3,500 people. Every year the hospital sees around 336,000 outpatients, admits 90,000 patients for treatment and 80,000 attend the A&E department.

The hospital works in partnership with other local trusts and universities through Surrey Health Partners to promote research, training and service development. The trust is a centre of excellence and training for minimal access surgery and is a recognised epicentre for robotic surgery, as well as leading research and development centre.

The Royal Surrey Charity raises funds to improve the patient experience at the hospital as well as enabling the latest treatment and specialist equipment to be purchased and invests in research into innovative treatments.

The hospital first opened its doors on April 27, 1866, after Queen Victoria agreed for "Royal" to be added to its name.