Worry over number of missed hospital appointments

The average proportion of missed outpatient appointments across York and Scarborough hospitals was currently 5.4%

Text messages are being sent to people with upcoming hospital appointments in a bid to reduce the number of "no-shows" among outpatients.

York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust introduced the reminders to encourage attendance and give patients the chance to rearrange their appointment.

Deprived neighbourhoods on the coast have been highlighted as areas where people were more likely to miss an appointment, a meeting on Friday was told.

Members of North Yorkshire Council's Scarborough and Whitby committee heard the reasons patients chose not to keep an appointment were often "unknown".

Councillors at the meeting said Scarborough residents who lived in areas with higher levels of poverty appear to be missing more appointments than residents of more affluent neighbourhoods.

The trust said the average rate of patients not attending appointments across its sites was currently 5.4%, with text reminders recently rolled out.

A trust spokesperson said: “We appreciate how busy people are and how easy it can be to forget an appointment or mislay an appointment card.

“Through our text reminder service, not only do patients get reminded of their upcoming appointment, but it also offers them the opportunity to cancel or rearrange, if required, by simply replying.

“This will help us to see more patients, more quickly. It’s also a quick and easy way for our patients to manage their appointments.”

Around 650,000 NHS hospital appointments were missed each month in England in 2021/22, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

NHS research suggested 10-20% of patients from the most deprived backgrounds were most likely to miss an appointment.

Councillor Liz Colling said the trust mapped missed hospital appointments by geography and medical condition, with results suggesting “our most deprived areas have the highest incidences of missed appointments”.

“While the trust is interested from an efficiency point of view, I’m really concerned that we have people with a health need who have gone through the necessary hoops and waits to get a hospital appointment, and then for reasons we do not know, have not kept that,” she said.

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