Time wasters: lax patients cost NHS £5m a year

8:37am Friday 4th July 2008

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Patients from the borough of Barnet missed more than 50,000 hospital appointments last year, costing the NHS millions of pounds.

Every day, around 150 people failed to turn up for appointments at clinics and for planned procedures between April 2007 and March 2008, wasting an estimated £5 million.

That cash could pay the starting wages of 250 nurses or more than 100 junior doctors and the problem has prompted hospital trusts serving the community to introduce a range of measures to cut down the no-shows.

A spokesman for Barnet and Chase Farm Hospital Trust, which manages Barnet Hospital, in Wellhouse Lane, Barnet, said it had begun texting reminders to patients.

She added: "Because around ten per cent of people regularly don't turn up for their outpatient appointment or procedure, we also over-book clinics by that amount, in the same way that an airline will over-book flights."

The figures also cover patients who have had appointments commissioned by Barnet Primary Care Trust at other major hospitals, such as the Royal Free Hospital, in neighbouring Hampstead, where Barnet patients missed 23,925 appointments in the same period.

A spokesman for the Royal Free Hampstead NHS Hospitals Trust said the problem causes delays to patients' treatment, as well as wasting resources.

She added that it was not clear why so many patients were missing appointments. The trust is launching a publicity campaign to make people aware of the importance of either attending or cancelling.

It will include sending out information to each out-patient and putting posters up in GP practices.

Like Barnet Hospital, the Royal Free is also now calling or texting patients before their appointment.

A Department of Health spokesman said that patients have a responsibility to either keep or cancel their appointments.

"We want to make it easier for people to be able to cancel appointments by improving practice telephone systems and encouraging the use of SMS texts and email," he said. "Other initiatives, such as electronic booking, are helping too.

"We will also continue to promote other options for seeing a GP or nurse, such as NHS Walk-in Centres where appointments are unnecessary, and expect that these new services will continue to reduce the number of missed appointments."