Deprived residents missing hospital appointments

Attendance rates improved with text reminders, the meeting was told

People living in deprived areas of a coastal town are the most likely to miss hospital appointments, an NHS trust has said.

North Yorkshire councillors were told the most deprived coastal areas were within three miles (4.8km) of Scarborough Hospital and had a 6.6% did not attend (DNA) rate for in-person appointments.

The York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said that the average rate of patients not attending appointments across its sites was around 5%.

The trust told members of the Scarborough and Whitby Area Committee it was looking at methods to improve attendance including the use of text reminders of appointments.

Gary Hardcastle, the trust's head of business intelligence and insight, said the data focused on East Coast residents with face-to-face appointments at Scarborough Hospital.

He said in areas where they had used text reminders attendance rates did improve.

"It was nice to see that when text message reminders were implemented there was a real shift in our proportion of non-attendance moving from 7% to below 5% and we have actually maintained that lower percentage."

'Think differently'

According to the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS), Councillor Liz Colling said: "Obviously the NHS trust is concerned about a clinic that is booked up but only five people attend.

"I'm concerned if someone in my area goes to the bother of visiting a GP and getting a referral to the hospital to see a specialist and just doesn't attend.

"If we don't understand why it is that they have an unmet health need that isn't going to go away, then they are going to reappear at a later date when their situation has deteriorated."

Simon Morritt, chief executive of the York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, told the meeting the reason for people not turning up could be down to public transport, but he said it was important for councillors to understand the reasons why patients failed to attend appointments.

"We may need to think differently about how we communicate with those families because text messages may not be enough and there may be other mechanisms for us to use," he said.

Councillors agreed that they would hold a special seminar with health bosses to better understand the reasons behind the attendance rates.

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