Rishi will introduce £10 fines for missed GP and hospital appointments

[GreenLunchBox]

How will that work, then? If you miss the phone call they'll fine you? Sounds like a license to print money to me 😂

Also so many patients receive letters from hospitals saying they've missed an appointment when they never actually received the letter inviting them for the appointment in the first place. God knows why hospitals still use snail mail. This is completely unworkable.

These two are acting like they're running for student council rather than PM of the country (see Truss wittering on about making Oxbridge interview every student that gets straight As). Tinkering around the edges and stoking culture wars when we're actually heading towards an actual catastrophe this autumn.

Spectacularly missing the pint of the thread, but now I really want a bag of tangy worms.

point

Good idea! But first we’d need to ensure every hospital/gp has an online booking system to cancel appointments more easily. I’d increase the charge to £20 and make it apply to everyone ie those in work, people on benefits (you could increase benefits) etc I know people will complain but something has to be done . This approach will take a leaf out of the private sector who probably have next to none missed appointments.

But if people are missing long-awaited appointments for a serious condition then whatever the reason that they're not attending is, it must be pretty deep rooted. I can't imagine charging them a tenner would make the slightest difference.

I've been thinking about it, and I think I've missed two medical appointments in my life. Once was an appointment I'd made with my GP to discuss my depression; I couldn't face it, missed it and it took me another couple of months of being very ill before I worked up the courage to talk about it. The other was when, it turned out, EPU did not in fact automatically tell the community midwives about miscarriages as I'd been told, so I was a no show for a booking-in appointment for a pregnancy I'd miscarried two weeks earlier. I'm guessing I maybe wouldn't have been charged for the latter - though I think it was technically my fault as I should have cancelled the appointment, I just didn't know I had to - but I don't think a £10 charge would have achieved anything in either case.

People on benefits will probably get their fines paid for anyway, so what’s the point!

Can he also introduce fiend for drs that don't have any blood appointments for 6 bloody weeks??

Well said. I've never missed a GP/hospital appointment being my own fault.

But plenty of times, I've had appointment letters arrive AFTER the date of the appointment, which were posted just a day or two before the appointment, so highly unlikely to be received in time!

I've also travelled 2 hours to a specialist hospital in a different county for a pointless appointment (a Wednesday) to see the consultant and the transplant co-ordinator, to find that the transplant co-ordinator never works on a Wednesday, so there was no one to do the tour of the transplant unit, nor do the treatment/admission timetable - wasted both our time and the consultant's time due to some NHS fool making the appointment on the wrong day! How much can patients fine the NHS when that happens?

Rishi is just panicking now and throwing ideas out there in the hope that some undecided voters may back him. Quite pathetic really.

How about they produce the statistics showing the demographics/age etc of those missing appointments? I'd bet that most would be in the exempt groups anyway. They're not going to fine a dementia sufferer or someone with MH issues are they? So, it'll just be another fine on the usual easy targets, i.e. workers!

I can understand why, as so many people just don't bother to show up for their appointments. But I can't see any way to make it work practically.

I've had to wait 2 months!

@mumda

I think at worst was about 400 a month across all 18 clinicians rooms.

So that's 20 per day (assuming 20 working days), or just over 1 no-show per day per clinician room. Doesn't sound that bad to me! Quite a small percentage of the total number of appointments available.

Exactly.
I'm a GP and in my experience there are 3 types of people who miss appointments.

1. people who weren't told about the appointment in the first place, due to admin errors
2. people who never miss appointments but for some freak reason they forgot
3. people with chaotic lives who miss appointments all the time.

Group 1 shouldn't be fined and would need to apply for exemption, causing lots of admin time and cost to process.
Group 2 would pay up.
Group 3 would never pay, despite costly chasing up.

Group 2 are the minority, so there would be a net financial loss in trying to implement this.

Our GP surgery don't do them at all anymore. They just give you a leaflet which details of the two local hospitals that have "drop in" phlebotomy sessions as part of their out patient departments!

Exactly. A minority will end up liable to pay, and there'll be huge administration involved, costing more money than is saved. A real "back of the fag packet" initiative by a desperate/failed politician.

@user1497207191 Maybe not too bad but they reduced it a bit by lots of nagging. Since Covid though they text appointments (as does the dentist) which is loads better.

It was hospital that I managed to "miss" an appointment. Neurologist had apparently made me a follow up appointment but didn't tell me apart from the letter to tell me I'd missed it. So I got dropped off his list. I assume if it was anything important they'd have written to me.
This was during the same set of visits that I'd turned up at adult medicine in time for my appointment to be asked "Did you not get the cancellation letter?" as one of the other staff printed it out and handed it to me.

They do.

they're SO over booked the odd missed appointment isn't the drama it's being made out to be!

It's not going to happen since Sunak is not going to be the next PM.

We don't seem able to see a GP face to face anyway but when I phoned for my dd I was told GP would phone her on 8th September. When I asked whether that would be morning or afternoon they said they couldn't say it would be between 8am and 7pm but he'd only try once and if she missed the call we would have to rebook. It's nothing urgent but not sure how practical it is for most people to keep themselves and their phone free for eleven hours. Would missing a call mean a fine as well?
The last hospital appointment my ds attended, he got the letter cancelling three days after the appointment. He never got a letter with a rearranged appointment but had got it from the receptionist when he went to book in at the cancelled appointment. I'm unsure how a fine would be able to be issued if there is no proof that a letter was received.

I'm in Italy and we have a similar system here but only for seeing a specialist. The difference is that when my GP refers me to a cardiologist/dermatologist or whoever I book my own appointment by looking at the availability online (or via a phone line, local pharmacy if I don't want to use the internet). I can also cancel easily. At the moment in the UK the booking system is not robust enough to introduce this.

I can't remember ever being seen on time for NHS care. That's ok, it's what I know to expect and I know some appointments will overrun because someone needs extra time. One day I will need that extra time. But I struggle to believe that the NHS services I've used could cope if the no shows actually turned up. Instead of running an hour late, they'd run even later and would have to decrease the number of appointments offered.

Are NHS staff really twiddling their thumbs for hours each day, waiting for missing patients?

I think its ridiculous, who will administrate the fines? Will there be a new department in each hospital? Surely it will cost more to run then it brings in?
Who will chase up the payments? Will it incur extra fines not paying on time?

Honestly it's not very well thought through and another waste of money, abit like most things the government does like changing dla to pip, universal credits, hs2.

It ways costs more then planned to achieve nothing.

If you get the Jealous Sweets ones, vegan, gluten-free and palm-oil free blahdeblah, they're practically a health food.

Too good for Rishi. He's got to eat Haribo and do the silly voice while announcing all his future immature policies. And in future, the government will wear our pants on our heads to make everyone smile tee hee hee.

I suggested to my GP that instead of fining people, they stopped them booking advance appointments. They could only book on the day. Then if they manage to turn up to that a couple of times successfully, then reinstate the ability to book in advance. I don't think that would transfer to hospitals though, but the person could be returned to the bottom of the list.

Have you run that idea past an Equality Impact Assessment?

So how many appointment slots would you hold open in case of such people needing to “book on the day” over and above the ones already reserved for the urgently ill?