‘Do not appears’ are a major headache for village GP surgery

A VILLAGE surgery is pleading with patients to notify staff if they can’t make their appointment.

There were a shocking 320 cases where people ‘did not attend’ in November and December 2016 at Sapcote’s Old School Surgery.

While in January doctors and nurses had 3,509 patients booked in for appointments and telephone consultations and 107 patients didn’t turn up or were unavailable when called.

Practice chiefs say the January figures alone equated to 19 hours and 35 minutes of time wast- ed, an extra day for a GP to work or extra two days for a nurse.

Doctors are now appealing for people to get in touch if they no longer need an appointment or know they won’t be able to make the time slot.

A practice spokesman urged: “We are asking patients to please make every effort to attend their booked appointments, or cancel so that someone else can take advantage of a released appointment.

“It is horrifying to learn that the total appointments missed at the end of the year equates to employing two extra doctors for two days a week.”

While many of the consultations are with the surgery’s family doctors others might be with one of the midwives, a counsellor, nurse, physiotherapist, COPD clinician or mental health practitioner.

Appointment times range from five minutes with a nurse perhaps for a simple blood test to an hour with a counsellor or therapist.

The surgery has a patient participation group, which practice leaders encourage people to join.