Half of GPs back fines for patients who don’t turn up for appointments
HALF of GPs want to fine patients for not showing up for their appointments, a survey has found.
Some even want to impose charges of £10 a time to teach patients to take more responsibility for their actions.
Around 17 million appointments are missed a year – about 0.5 per cent of the 340 million consultations which take place annually.
Two years ago Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt called for patients to be fined to encourage them to take ‘personal responsibility’ for wasting time.
This latest survey of 821 GPs by Pulse magazine found that 51 per cent backed the fines.
Only 37 per cent were opposed and the remaining 12 per cent were unsure. The doctors were not asked how much patients should pay but several suggested £10 for a missed slot.
However, professional bodies oppose the fines and fear they will penalise vulnerable patients, including those with dementia or mental health problems.
Instead, they want surgeries to text patients the day beforehand reminding them of the appointment date and time.
GPs’ leader Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard said: ‘We understand why GPs and our teams get frustrated when patients don’t turn up and are looking for ways to reduce these occurrences but we don’t believe charging a penalty is the answer.
‘GP practices across the country are already implementing success- ful schemes to reduce missed appointments.’ She said these included text messaging reminders, better patient education and awareness posters detailing the unintended consequences of not attending.
Prof Stokes-Lampard, chairman of the Royal College of GPs, added:
‘Cannot pretend this is not a problem’
‘Fining patients for not attending will adversely affect the most vulnerable in society.
‘Implementing the necessary systems to do this will only continue to overburden GPs and their teams by adding more bureaucracy when we are already facing intense workload pressures.’ Dr Richard Vautrey, chairman of the BMA’s GP committee, said: ‘The BMA has consistently opposed charges for patients as such a system would require an expensive, cumbersome bureaucracy.
‘Those who may be most likely to miss appointments, particularly vulnerable patients, may also be the people who would be exempt from fines and fining them is not the way to address some nonattendance issues.’
In the survey, a GP in Surrey said: ‘When some services appear free, some patients do not always appreciate the true costs to provide that service.’
Another doctor from Kent said: ‘We cannot continue to pretend that this is not a problem.’
Yet some GPs were relieved when patients did not show up with one describing missed appointments as a ‘ saviour’. The BMA has previously estimated that 5 per cent of appointments are missed although in some surgeries the proportion is 10 per cent.
This is extremely frustrating for the majority of patients who keep their appointments, particularly if they have had to wait several weeks.
The average patient waits 13 days to see a family doctor, up from ten days two years ago.
In 2015, Mr Hunt said he would consider fines for patients who missed GP or hospital slots. ‘We are very stretched for resources,’ he said. ‘I don’t actually have a problem in principle with the idea of charging people for missed appointments. I think in practical terms it could be difficult to do.’