Patients here are worse than average when it comes to not turning up Missed GP appointments in county are costing NHS salaries of 81 doctors
MISSED GP appointments in Leicestershire are costing the NHS nearly £25,000 a day.
New figures from NHS digital reveal that patients in Leicester are worse than average when it comes to not turning up for a doctor’s appointment without cancelling.
In the city, 7.0% of GP appointments with a known outcome were marked as “patient did not attend” in December – nearly 11,000 appointments over the course of the month. That compares to a national average of 5.6% of appointments where the outcome was known being missed at the end of last year.
In West Leicestershire patients didn’t turn up for 4.7% of appointments, and the same was true in East Leicestershire and Rutland.
Figures include all types of appointment – whether faceto-face in the surgery or home, a telephone call, or a video conference. They can be with a doctor, a nurse or another member of practice staff. The NHS estimates that each missed appointment costs around £30.
Across Leicestershire and Rutland, there were 497,536 appointments at GP practices in December. Of those, the patient was recorded as not attending in 25,498 cases.
It means “no-showers” in Leicestershire and Rutland cost the taxpayer a total of £764,940 a month, or £24,675 a day. That would be enough to pay for the salaries of 81 doctors.
Across England as
awhole there were 23.3 million appointments in December 2019.
Of those, the patient was known to have attended on 20.9 million occasions, but failed to show up in more than 1.2 million cases. It works out as an overall cost to the NHS of £37.4 million in a single month, or just over £1.2 million a day – enough for 3,961 GPs salaries.
Professor Martin Marshall, chair of the Royal College of GPs, said: “Missed appointments are very frustrating, especially when GPs could be seeing other patients – but, for some patients, there may be more complex reasons for nonattendance. In many cases, missed appointments will be simple human error, and practices are working hard to ensure that patients are aware of their appointments by sending reminders by text and email or encouraging them to make appointments through the surgery app.
“However, non-attendance can also indicate something more serious, such as underlying mental health issues, and it would be helpful if practices had more time and resource to follow up patients they might have particular concerns about and determine their reasons for not using their appointment.
“At a time when we have a severe shortage of GPs and patients in many areas of the country are having to wait weeks to see their family doctor, we would urge patients who no longer need their appointment to contact the surgery at the earliest possible opportunity so that valuable GP time can be used for the benefit of other patients.”