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.

We got a phone call from the GP's surgery berating us for my mum not keeping her appointment. It wasn't an easy conversation telling them she had died suddenly overnight (in a hospital and she was in her mid 50s). Had they issued a fine, we would have refused to pay it. To be fair, the GP called back later and was really lovely, but his staff were horrible.

I'd be fine with that if it actually meant I could get an appointment at all!
My Gp surgery reads your online "application" and rings you back at some point before 6.30pm that day. Except that they only let the phone ring 3 times then they cross you off their list...they'd make a fortune!

I'd make it £100. I'd rather see that money enforced an a bloody tenner. Prob cost more to implement

I work in a hospital where letters take days to leave the post room and are then sent by second class post.

Far too many people receive their letters AFTER their appointments, it's embarrassing.

This would be unworkable under current practices.

What's next?

A penalty point systems for people who walk though a door held open by someone else without saying thank you?

Jail time for people who pre in the pool?

Lose your licence if you put fake eyelashes in your car headlights?

These two are fiddling with the ornaments of government whilst the house burns to the ground. A plague on both their houses.

MIL misses appointments all the time. She has alzheimers. POA is on her records with instructions to only contact dh... with phone numbers and address.

But they still phone and write to her. Even after complaints. God luck getting a fine from her...

*good

I would be interested to find out the number of appointments missed due to admin/NHS inefficiency. I imagine its high, from my own experience, and this thread.
Just using "missed apointment" stats is disingenuous (and putting the blame solely on patients) when so many of them are no fault of the patient. If they have the funds to set up and implement a system of fines for missed appointments, I'd rather it was directed into making their own allocating/booking/cancelling appointments systems more efficient and user friendly. But reality is there would be no money in the pot for either.

My mum has poor mobile signal in her house. Repeatedly she books a GP phone appt, the receptionist checks the number to call, she tells them the landline and they call the mobile.

I keep seeing the thread title in my threads list and it's making me angrier every time. This isn't even a sticking plaster for the NHS.

How about some managerial and administrative reform?

What about improving working conditions and pay for medical staff?

Funding the NHS properly and effectively?

Generally just anything to stop it's total collapse and slide to complete privatisation so that Rishi can make himself and his mates even richer!

It’s red meat for the hard of thinking. The pair of them are coming out with more ridiculous ideas as time goes on. By the end of August one of them will maintain they believe in fairies who will wave a magic wand and solve all our problems. They both think we’re all stupid.

I received a letter telling me my appointment was cancelled...the day after the appointment. They used their brain the second time and called me.

Yes, there is alot of abuse of NHS appts with Did Not Attend's but equally I've been royally fucked about, told categorically NOT to attend by hospital appointments, checked with 3 members in the actual department and told definitely telephone consultation. No call. Chased. Told to hang in in there. Next thing I get a DNA email that evening & a letter & discharged back to my GP. I kicked up a stink & got back in the system quickly, luckily. Can't see how the fee is workable.

Hope it works both ways. Because if so I’ll make far more money from the nhs than they’ll make from me. Only last week I had a day off work, £25 travel expenses to get to the hospital and they’d cancelled the clinic and forgot to send letters to tell anyone!

Last year I was sent 50 miles to the wrong hospital for an appt and got there to be told actually I needed to be at my local hospital. Again they’d forgotten to tell Me.

three cancelled operations (on the day) in the last year.

This makes me so angry of it’s true. GP services are already practically inaccessible where I am. I have to beg for a face to face appointment, which a completely unqualified receptionist triaged, otherwise I’m given a phone appointment at a random time (no choice) and if I miss the call (because I work in a school and can’t always answer first time at 11.45am or whatever!) it’s a missed appointment.

I was referred for a scan earlier in the summer. Letter arrived from local clinic offering me a time I couldn’t make. I called and after many attempts got through to someone who said they would rearrange my appointment for a different day/time. I got a letter in the post that arrived the day AFTER the appointment (which was at the same time that I’d explained I couldn’t do!). I was taken off the list and have to go back to my GP to be re-referred.

Would I have been charged for that? They can sing for it…

Does he think that people ring up for an appointment Get told the appointment date and time and if they don’t turn up then they should be fined.

My surgery you have to email in to get an appointment. They have admitted they don’t read the emails a lot of the time so you don’t get an appointment
I also think they forget to tell you when the appointment is a lot of the time as Dd has randomly just been called out of the blue by the doctor and expected to discuss her medical issues out in the street
Or if you get an appointment then it isn’t at a set time. It could be anytime. Dd has waited for her appointment a couple of times and failed to get a call. (Will the surgery in these cases have to pay patients £10 for missing the appointment) Dd has to email in again and wait another 2-3weeks for another appointment

Would this apply to hospital appointments also?
I have had a couple of appointments in different hospitals

On both occasions I received a letter with my appointment date and time. Also on the letter is a track of the different departments it has gone through.
There is the date of the request for an appointment eg. 1st April 2022

The date the appointment was decided 24th April 2022

The date the appointment date was sent to typing 29th April 2022

The date the letter with the appointment date was typed 15th May 2022

The date the letter was sent out to me.
1st June 2022

The appointment date was 1st May 2022

I was told in one hospital I had to go to the reception desk in the hospital department to get an appointment as I had “missed” my original appointment which then cost me money on petrol and parking.

When I got there the missed appointment sign was up on the wall.
It was over 200,000 missed appointments that year.

I wonder why?

I hope Rishi isn’t taking these missed appointment times seriously as it just shows how out of touch with reality he is especially when it comes to be treated on the NHS

He really is clueless.

Well, it's a fantastic idea because NHS staff will tell you how many patients just can't be bothered to turn up. Sadly, it won't happen because Rishi won't win and also NHS admin is too shambolic to organise prompt collection of the fines.
But, yes in principle, if people knew just how much money this wasted (like going to A&E unnecessarily) it might help to alter behaviour.

100% this.

If the NHS had an online booking system, any appointments cancelled a day or two before could be rebooked for other patients. Currently it’s pretty much impossible to cancel at short notice as no-one answers the phones.

Not happening. Such a trivial sum as £10 won’t act as a deterrent to anyone, and introducing fines at a sum which would be a serious deterrent, eg £50 would be politically impossible.

Why the fuck don’t the NHS use web based systems and email? It’s the 21st century. Why on Earth hasn’t this been introduced like in every other service I can think of? The endless hanging on the phone and waiting for letters on the post is archaic.

I "missed" a GP appointment fpr my son because I was 5 mins late. I'm pretty sure there were 3 people waiting in front of me anyway! I had taken the only appointment they offered me and it was in rush hour which is unpredictable and I couldnt get a whole morning off work.They refused to see us, even though I almost cried with disappointment. It was rebooked for two weeks later and of course I was 10 mins early, and the appointment started 20 mins late.

I'd have been really annoyed to have to pay £10 in that situation.

It will be impossible to administer however I had 2 patients this week who booked their appointments at 8am ish for later that day and they didn't turn up!!! Really annoys me

absolutely agree with this, Ive been saying it myself for a while. I booked a private treatment via bupa the other week, they preauthorised my credit card, I knew that id be charged the full price of the treatment if I cancelled within 24 hours of appt or DNA. I made sure I went!
I work in a very specialist clinic in NHS and I reckon about 20% Dna rate. last Friday 4/6 turned up. The policy is that they get a letter 6 weeks beforehand and the letter ALWAYS has our number on to change or cancel. It is an answerphone as we are not sat by the phone waiting we are with patients, but leave an audible message and we will ring back. Its still not enough for some people, people need to start taking more responsibility. Something like the above. Have booking system the other way round where you can choose a slot but on the onus that it will Pre authorise your debit/credit card and charge you if you dont turn up or call to cancel if you are unwell

Charge people £50 per appointment - less likely to miss it in that case

It's ridiculous, isn't it? What a massive waste of money from clinical Budgets A-C to save on a bit of postage from admin Budget D.

My gynaecologist told me she dictates her letters to patients' GPs the same day, and to save money the voice files are then sent to India where they are typed up, and they are sent back digitally; but they still have to be printed out, franked, put into the postal system and delivered to patients. She said it adds about 5 days' delay to the usual 5-7 days (which was bad enough), and longer if there are corrections.

And those local typists' jobs have been lost.