NHS loses £3.7m over missed appointments (From Thisisdorset)

NHS loses £3.7m over missed appointments

11:14am Thursday 3rd August 2006

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MILLIONS of pounds are being squandered in the NHS South West because a growing number of people fail to turn up for hospital outpatient appointments, it has been revealed.

Figures just released for 2004-5 show that a staggering one in 12 appointments in the region is missed, each one costing an average of £97. In Dorset alone, that adds up to nearly £3.7 million wasted for the cash-strapped NHS.

Jill Crook, interim lead for nursing at NHS South West said: "Missed appointments cost the NHS in our area thousands of pounds every year. When a patient doesn't turn up for their appointment, valuable time is lost, time that could have been spent with another patient.

"It is clear that action needs to be taken if we are to reduce the number of missed appointments, enabling NHS staff in the South West to see more patients on a daily basis and providing faster care to the local population."

Nationally, patients missed one in 10 of the 45 million outpatient appointments recorded by the NHS in England. Men between the ages of 15 and 44 were the most likely not to turn up. Around 14 per cent of first appointments and 19 per cent of follow-up appointments were missed.

The figures for Dorset's three acute hospitals all showed a marginal improvement from the previous year. At the Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch Hospitals Trust, 13,686 appointments were missed out of a total of 211,221, equivalent to 6.1 per cent.

At Poole, there were 13,447 missed appointments out of 169,328, or 7.4 per cent. In West Dorset County Hospital at Dorchester, there were 9,624 no-shows out of 130,819 appointments, or 6.9 per cent.

Dorset HealthCare Trust, which provides mental health services, had 1,259 missed appointments out of 11,985, or 9.5 per cent. But it also recorded the biggest improvement in figures, from 16.9 per cent the previous year.

NHS South West spokeswoman Kate Barrett said: "Trusts across the region have been doing a number of things to try and reduce missed appointments. Some of them do text alerts to remind people and a lot of them ring and use email."

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