In November, 142 patients did not attend their appointment
Each appointment is a valuable opportunity for our patients. We aim to provide all our patients with the best possible service and to achieve this we need your cooperation
If you are unable to keep your appointment, please make every effort to cancel it well in advance so that it may be offered to someone else. Non-attendance and cancellations at short notice without a valid reason deprives other patients of essential medical services.
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More than 15 million general practice appointments are being wasted each year because patients do not turn up and fail to warn surgeries that they will not be attending.
There are around 307 million sessions scheduled with GPs, nurses, therapists and other practice staff every year and 5% – one in twenty – are missed without enough notice to invite other patients. That works out as around 15.4 million missed slots.
Of these, around 7.2million are with busy family doctors, which adds up to more than 1.2 million GP hours wasted each year – the equivalent of over 600 GPs working full time for a year.
Each appointment costs an average of £30, putting the total cost to the NHS at more than £216million pounds on top of the disruption for staff and fellow patients that would pay for:
- The annual salary of 2,325 full time GPs
- 224, 640 cataract operations
- 58,320 hip replacement operations
- 216,000 drug treatment courses for Alzheimer’s
- The annual salary of 8, 424 full time community nurses
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POLICY FOR FAILURE TO ATTEND
The first time a patient fails to attend a booked appointment we will send them a DNA (did not attend) letter reminding them that in future they must cancel
appointments if they are unable to attend.
After three DNA's we will consider advising you to register with another surgery. To avoid being sent a DNA letter please ensure that you cancel your appointment a minimum of an hour before the appointment time. Anything cancelled after this time could count as a DNA.