To think that if you cancel on the day with the NHS, you should be put to the bottom of the list?

That does make sense & is understandable. It explains why you just cannot book/call a taxi for anything here during those times. However, when smarty pants people say 'Why, just get a taxi!', it demonstrates a complete & utter lack of knowledge of most of the country outside cities. This is why you get threads like this, full of finger wagging complacency without even a smidgeon of knowledge of how things are for most people.
Transport & administration are an absolute mess & pile on the anxiety for sick people. Perhaps the OP will do a couple more weeks in her job & start to see that life is not as straightforward as she so smugly believes.

It’s because SEN children have places at schools miles away. Have a friend who has her youngest DS that goes to a SEN school which is 15 miles away and has a taxi. Very few kids go to these schools by mini bus as all the kids live in all corners of the county

Letters do get sent.

Haha, what's a taxi? Between 8-10am & 2-5 in our town, you cannot get a bloody taxi. You can't even book one because 'school run'. Why they need so many vehicles is beyond me. The one man bands are off doing airport runs.
There are buses to our hospital but god knows why because, in spite of my living 3 minutes walk from mine, everything I have had to attend is 30-50 miles away with all the attendant expense. The winter fuel allowance won't cover how much I've spent this year. Glib comments like this really piss me off. It's a complicated, poorly integrated system all round.

Taxi?

Like a lot of things, people living in London and other big cities simply don't understand the realities of life in smaller cities, towns and rural areas. Plenty of places still don't have Uber! In my town, you can be waiting 2/3 hours if you ring for a taxi at busy times. Even the taxi ranks at bus and train stations are often empty and you have to wait ages for one to come.

Yes this is true. However my consultant has had leave approved with 1 weeks notice. The consultants run the place in our trust and if they ask for last minute leave it often gets granted 🤷‍♀️

Doctors have to give 6 weeks minimum notice of any leave planned be it personal or study leave (conferences etc) in order for clinics to be rescheduled or other colleagues asked (if available) to step in.
I am sorry to hear of what you’ve and are going through. Wishing you all the best for a good outcome. x

I think you're right because I have only ever had an apology once for a cancelled appt. I was about to board the train on the day & they cancelled because two people on the team were sick - I received effusive apologies for that and they remade very quickly. Quite different from the day surgery that was cancelled (again, in a hospital miles from me) smashing up all the many arrangements that I & my daughter had put in place. The reason? I had to have another procedure first in another hospital, also miles away which no one had ever mentioned to me. Not a single sorry to had. My time (& shredded nerves) is of absolutely no interest to them.
So, yes, patient no shows are bad but I seriously doubt that they are all just slackers who can't be arsed and you can hardly be surprised if it triggers stories like mine & others. For nearly two years I've undergone two cancer investigations, one came to nothing & other was diagnosed & I'm just in the last part of treatment now (I hope🤞). But the endless chopping & changing, cancelled train journeys, cancelled hotel bookings can't have been doing me any good.
I must say that, when it comes down to the actual treatment, everything has been excellent & the staff brilliant. It's just the appointments mechanism that needs a hard look at. A friend of mine had an op cancelled because the surgeon was on holiday - surely his holiday would have been in a diary at the time the date was proposed?
I'll shut up now.

Oh, for Christ's sake! How many more times have I got to state that there wasn't one available?

Taxi?

Yes you need to check up and chase them up if you don't get a letter when promised. Husband was told by doctor he'd refer him to hospital. He didn't get a letter so eventually succumbed to my nagging and phoned hospital. They'd never received referral from GP, who eventually admitted he'd forgotten to make the referral!

Which not everyone can afford

Taxi?

Some days it's unavoidable. I was due a scan - came out to get in the car and the brake warning light came on. Was the car safe to drive? I didn't know and called out the AA. It was half an hour before my appointment but couldn't take the risk.

I cancelled the appointment and as it turned out, the brakes needed doing. It would have been safe to drive a few miles up the road but I couldn't know that. Fortunately, I've got an appointment reset for next month.

Should I be penalised for that? I was being careful.

I've been marked down as DNA a couple of times. Once when I informed the hospital weeks in advance that I no longer needed the appointment - but they ignored it. Once when I missed an appointment because I turned up on the day I'd booked for, only to find they'd put it in their system as several days before the day I asked for (& yes, I know I was right because they'd confirmed my chosen date, even though they'd put the wrong one in).

Why should I be fined for either of those? That's why it would be unfair - not that unfairness is a bar to implementing something stupid.

I can't believe half the replies on here. Are you all so thick you don't understand that a major factor in wait times and operating delays are due to arseholes not attending their appointments? And that's not even looking at the costs, all of which could be better spent.
And yes of course there are occasions when someone is ill or breaks down or whatever but in most cases it's people being disorganised, forgetting the appointment, double booking, etc and then just too lazy to admit mistake and phone to cancel . And as for unnecessary appointments all NHS services have a patient protocol to follow and if you don't want your appointment just bloody say so. It's not difficult.
Very few letters are delayed or lost in post these days and that's why they all do text messages where possible.
If I ever need urgent appointment for anything I just phone every now and again asking if they've got any cancellations and I always get an earlier slot. It would be helpful to have an online clearing system for people to use in this respect, like universities use to fill up their places.

@ErinBell01 I was referred in January for a gynae appointment. Last time I didn't receive the appointment letter, just a stroppy you didn't attend. So having read this thread yesterday I took it upon myself to phone up today. Yes I'm on the list for an appointment, I should get a letter in 10 weeks with an appointment for a month after that. I will give it 12 weeks and then I am phoning up to check.

I think you're right because I have only ever had an apology once for a cancelled appt. I was about to board the train on the day & they cancelled because two people on the team were sick - I received effusive apologies for that and they remade very quickly. Quite different from the day surgery that was cancelled (again, in a hospital miles from me) smashing up all the many arrangements that I & my daughter had put in place. The reason? I had to have another procedure first in another hospital, also miles away which no one had ever mentioned to me. Not a single sorry to had. My time (& shredded nerves) is of absolutely no interest to them.
So, yes, patient no shows are bad but I seriously doubt that they are all just slackers who can't be arsed and you can hardly be surprised if it triggers stories like mine & others. For nearly two years I've undergone two cancer investigations, one came to nothing & other was diagnosed & I'm just in the last part of treatment now (I hope🤞). But the endless chopping & changing, cancelled train journeys, cancelled hotel bookings can't have been doing me any good.
I must say that, when it comes down to the actual treatment, everything has been excellent & the staff brilliant. It's just the appointments mechanism that needs a hard look at. A friend of mine had an op cancelled because the surgeon was on holiday - surely his holiday would have been in a diary at the time the date was proposed?
I'll shut up now.

I agree about the "patient blaming" culture - it's endemic.

My OH had a 9-30 appointment with a cancer specialist in a different city to discuss a stem cell transplant with the specialist and the stem cell co-ordinator. Waiting room full. Others were going through all morning, we were sat there like lemons. He asked a couple of times at reception only to be told "they were busy" and just wait. By around 1pm, the waiting room was empty and even the receptionist had gone for lunch. We went down the corridor where the consultants seemed to be and asked a random nurse who said the consultants had all gone for lunch - she tried to find his file, and it was left on the side. She was actually helpful and made a couple of phone calls, only to find the stem cell transplant co-ordinator never worked on Wednesdays so we should never have been given that appointment. Receptionist should never have booked us in and the appointment clerk should never have given that appointment.

A whole day wasted. Not only that, but waiting 4 hours in a busy waiting room is hardly the best for someone immunocompromised due to chemotherapy!

When he phoned to get a new appointment, the appts clerk was really off hand with him, asking why he'd failed to attend as it had been put down on the system as a FTA! Patient blaming at it's finest.