Missed GP appointments costing NHS millions
Missed GP appointments costing NHS millions
Patients urged to cancel appointments rather than just not show up. Between 1/4/23 and 31/3/24 we have 929 appointments that have been arranged but not attended by patients at The Devonshire Lodge Practice. This means approximately £27870 cost to the practice.
In September 2024, we have 102 appointments marked as DNA’d, approximately £3030 costing.
More than 15 million general practice appointments are being wasted each year because patients do not turn up and fail to warn surgeries that they will not be attending.
There are around 307 million sessions scheduled with GPs, nurses, therapists and other practice staff every year and 5% – one in twenty – are missed without enough notice to invite other patients. That works out as around 15.4 million missed slots.
Of these, around 7.2million are with busy family doctors, which adds up to more than 1.2 million GP hours wasted each year – the equivalent of over 600 GPs working full time for a year.
Each appointment costs an average of £30, putting the total cost to the NHS at more than £216million pounds on top of the disruption for staff and fellow patients that would pay for:
- The annual salary of 2,325 full time GPs
- 224, 640 cataract operations
- 58,320 hip replacement operations
- 216,000 drug treatment courses for Alzheimer’s
- The annual salary of 8, 424 full time community nurses
NHS England is ramping up access to GPs and other health professionals by recruiting thousands of new practice staff and appointments are now available in the evening and at weekdays right across the country.
