One in six appointments cancelled by hospitals

Highest rate on record for University Hospitals Leicester

UNIVERSITY Hospitals of Leicester cancelled one in six outpatient appointments last year - the highest rate on record.

While cancelled appointments are likely to be rescheduled, they mean patients potentially facing a longer wait for treatment.

The hospital trust cancelled 259,520 outpatient appointments in 2017/18, or 16.5% of all appointments booked.

The number cancelled was up from 249,655 in 2016/17, or 16.1%, and up from 145,491 cancellations in 2006/07, when records began.

Patients also cancelled one in eight appointments last year (12.2%),

or a total of 192,020. This was the highest rate of patient cancellations since records began.

The number was up from 182,340 patient cancellations a year before.

Overall - after taking into account cancellations, patients not attending and appointments missed for unknown reasons - just two-thirds (65.8%) of the 1.57m outpatient appointments booked at University Hospitals of Leicester went ahead last year, down from 67% in 2016/17. This was the lowest proportion of booked appointments attended since records began in 2006/07.

Across England, there were 119.4m outpatient appointments in 2017/18, of which 93.5m were attended by patients.

This means 78.4% of booked appointments were attended, the lowest proportion since records began in 2006/07.

Cancellations by both patients and hospitals were at record levels in 2017/18, driving the growing proportion of outpatient appointments that are not going ahead.

In 2007/08, 8.3% of appointments were missed due to patients not attending, and 4.7% were cancelled by patients. In 2017/18, those figures were 6.7% and 7.1% respectively.

Over the same period, the proportion of appointments cancelled by hospitals has grown from one in 21 (4.7%) to one in 13 (7.5%).

This means patients are less likely to just not turn up to appointments than 10 years ago.

They are, however, much more likely to cancel, or face hospitals cancelling their appointments.

As the combined proportion of “do-not-attends” and patient cancellations has remained mostly steady over the 10 years, it suggests patients have responded to messages encouraging them to let hospitals know if they can’t attend appointment.