Should there be fines for hospital no-shows?

PEOPLE who don’t show up for an NHS appointment should be fined a £10 cancellation fee. It takes a few minutes to call and cancel, enabling someone else to have the slot. BERICE HOWARTH, Nottingham.

I AM one of those ‘irresponsible’ patients who has missed an NHS outpatient appointment. I did try to cancel, ringing twice a day for a week. Each time, I held on for 20 minutes, but no one answered. How many others have also been unable to cancel? Maybe, instead of waiting for hours due to overbooking, other people were seen on time. KEN McLEOD, Leeds.

MY SISTER spent a whole day trying to get through to cancel an appointment because her husband was too unwell to attend. She left messages on answer phones but, two days later, received a letter berating her husband for failing to keep the appointment. Meanwhile, our 95-year-old mother was waiting to be wheeled to theatre when her operation was cancelled. She was sent a letter stating that as she had cancelled the procedure, if she wished to proceed again, she would have to re-visit her GP and begin the assessment from the start. How accurate are these statistics?

DOREEN BATES, Huntingdon, Cambs. HOW do missed appointments cost the NHS £1 billion (Mail)? And how can this make things harder when resources are already stretched? Surely, extremely busy hospitals would not be able to cope if the missing 8 million patients turned up. At every appointment I have attended, I have never been seen on time — the longest I waited was an hour-and-a-half. How long would it have been if all the absentees had arrived? E. J. MALONE, Bromley, Kent.