No-show GP patients cost £69k A DAY
MISSED GP appointments in Greater Manchester are costing the NHS more than £2 million a month - or £69,796 a day.
New figures from NHS digital reveal that patients in Manchester are some of the worst in England for not turning up for a doctor’s appointment without cancelling.
A total of 8.3 per cent of GP appointments with a known outcome were marked as ‘patient did not attend’ in December – more than 17,000 appointments over the course of the month.
That compares to a national average of 5.6pc at the end of last year.
All of the region, apart from Bury, saw higher than average rates of missed appointments. In Bury it was 5.6pc.
The proportion was also particularly high in Salford, where patients didn’t turn up for 7.9pc of appointments, and Bolton, where 7.8pc were missed.
Figures include all types of appointment – whether face-toface 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 Greater Manchester, there were nearly 1.1 million appointments at GP practices in December. Of those, the patient was recorded as not attending in 72,123 cases.
It means ‘no-showers’ in Greater Manchester cost the taxpayer a total of £2.2 million during the month, or £69,796 a day.
That would be enough to pay for the salaries of 229 doctors. Across England as a whole 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.
Professor Martin Marshall, Chair of the Royal College of GPs, said: “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.”