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 19 July 2008 08:12 BST

'Over 13m' GP appointments missed each year

Thursday, 23 Aug 2007 08:23
GPs' surgeries face 13.5 million missed appointments each year

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Over 13 million appointments with general practitioners (GPs) are missed each year, according to a new study.

Developing Patient Partnerships (DPP) also found that 6.5 million practice nurse appointments are not kept.

Ninety-seven per cent of practices surveyed said missed appointments are a massive waste of NHS resources and 90 per cent believe they increase waiting times for other patients.

In response 72 per cent said they would support striking off people who regularly miss appointments from their books. Public support for the drastic measure was found to come from 41 per cent of respondents.

The idea of charging patients who continually miss appointments has been rejected in the past by doctors at the annual conference of Local Medical Committees.

Forgetting unwanted appointments was not the only reason for the millions of missed appointments; over half of the patients surveyed said they had not been able to get through to surgeries to cancel on the telephone.

Dr David Wrigley, DPP chairman and GP in Carnforth, Lancashire, said: "In our view striking patients off really is the last resort – but what is clear from this is the level of frustration felt by GP practices and clearly the public don't look too kindly on people missing appointments either. It's by no means a 'them and us' situation."

Commenting on the findings, Dr Laurence Buckman, chairman of the British Medical Association's GPs committee, said: "Whilst we understand the frustrations that other patients and doctors feel when some people persistently fail to turn up for GP appointments, we think it is important that practices find out why this is happening before taking precipitant action.

"Many practices have a process to deal with the situation and help these patients use NHS services more appropriately. Removing a patient from a list for misuse of the service should be absolutely the last resort taken after the patient has had some opportunity to explain what has happened."
End of story


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