People wasting precious NHS time total 400 a day
Trust data shows 135,519 patients didn’t turn up for appointments
ALMOST 400 people a day are wasting NHS time by missing their hospital appointments in Newcastle, figures have revealed.
Data shows that there were 135,519 outpatient appointments at the Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Trust where patients failed to attend in 2016/17.
This works out to an average of 371 a day for the trust, which runs the Freeman Hospital and Royal Victoria Infirmary, and is the equivalent of one in 14 appointments (7.3%) scheduled during the year.
The trust says that missed appointments increase waiting times for other patients, and has a knock-on effect across NHS services.
Gordon Elder, outpatient and medical records manager at The Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said: “We have a number of multi-speciality clinics across our sites and those we provide for other Trusts across the North East and Cumbria, in 2016/2017 we ran a total of 1.25 million outpatient appointments.
“It is very important that patients who are given a hospital appointment attend, or reschedule if their plans change.
“Patients who do not attend hospital appointments affect the experience of other patients. Missed appointments can increase outpatient waiting times and waste doctors’ and nurses’ time waiting for a patient to arrive in clinic.
“In addition to this, this also has an effect on our administrative processes, as patients who have missed their appointments have to be contacted to reschedule.
“We have a number of systems in place to remind patients about their appointments and to let us know if they can no longer attend.
“We have been working on a new text messaging and audio reminder service that we hope to expand to all suitable outpatient appointments next year.”
People in their 20s were the most likely to miss outpatient appointments at the hospitals, with one failure to attend for every six attendances, while those in their 70s were the most likely to turn up, with a ratio of one failure to attend for every 19 attendances.
One in 12 outpatient appointments at South Tyneside (8.4%) were also not attended in 2016/17, 15,738 in total, while the County Dur-
ham and Darlington trust saw an average of 143 appointments missed a day, a total of 52,358 in 2016/17 or 8.2%.
There were 7.9m outpatient appointments where patients failed to attend across hospital trusts in England in 2016/17, an average of 906 every hour.
This was the equivalent of one in 15 appointments (6.7%) scheduled during the year.
People in their 20s were the most likely to miss outpatient appointments at the hospitals, with one failure to attend for every seven attendances, followed by under 20s, with one non-attendance for every eight attendances.
Those in their 70s were the most likely to turn up, with a ratio of one failure to attend for every 23 attendances.