"Hospital patients are costing the NHS millions by missing five or more appointments last year"

[dutchman]

The average cost of a missed first appointment is about £200 while a missed follow up appointment costs about £120



Nearly 700 people failed to turn up for five or more appointments at Coventry and Warwickshire hospitals last year - costing the local NHS millions of pounds.

A total of 648 patients did not attend five or more arranged appointments at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust in 2015/16, up from 597 in 2014/15.

The trust runs University Hospital in Coventry and St Cross in Rugby.

Overall 51,212 patients across the area failed to attend at least one appointment in 2015/16, up seven per cent from 47,847 in 2014/15.

Most people missed just one appointment, but in 2015/16, 1,317 missed four and 3,251 missed three.

Figures from Coventry and Rugby Clinical Commissioning Group, which plans and buys the majority of health services in the areas, said the average cost of a missed first appointment is about £200 while a missed follow up appointment costs about £120.

Across Britain, 154,000 people did not attend five or more appointments in 2015/16, although this was down slightly from 159,000 in 2014/15.

Overall 5.63million people across Britain failed to attend at least one hospital appointment in 2015/16, up from 5.6m in 2014/15.

This included 4m who did not attend one appointment, up from 3.9m, 1.02m who did not attend two appointments, 335,000 who did not attend three appointments.

There were 143,700 people who failed to attend four appointments in 2015/16, up 3.5 per cent from the 138,900 who did not attend in 2014/15.

One patient at South Warwickshire’s hospitals failed to attend 21 appointments in 2014/15, as did one in 2014/15 and one in 2015/16 at London North West’s hospitals.

National guidance states that if a patient misses two appointments they should be discharged from the relevant service back to the care of their referrer.

There are exceptions for appointments for children where it is at the clinician/service's discretion to offer additional appointments.

The figures come from Freedom of Information requests to hospital trusts and health boards across Britain. Five hospital trusts or health boards failed to answer the request.

The figures cover patients who did not attend arranged appointments, and failed to contact the hospital far enough in advance to cancel or rearrange.

Figures are for the total number of appointments missed for each patient in a year and cover first as well as subsequent appointments across all departments of the hospital.

A UHCW NHS Trust spokesman said: “At UHCW, we take missed hospital appointments very seriously, and have launched initiatives to remind patients of their appointments. This includes texting patients their appointment details as well as sending a letter.

“We continue to look for newer and more effective ways to remind patients of their hospital appointments.”