To expect people to attend their outpatients appointments?

[cheshirekitty]

I work in an outpatients clinic in a NHS hospital. Today 50% of my patients did not bother to turn up. No phone call to cancel, nothing. We have a waiting list for this clinic, and if these patients who did not attend had phoned yesterday to cancel we could have accommodated other patients.

So for large amounts of time today, myself and the doctor where being paid for doing nothing. No wonder we pay so much in tax and national insurance.

In our dept (SALT) they are working on a model where people have a text sent ot them and where they have to reconfirm 24 hours in advance or summat.

I agree,it's scandalous. We quite often have a salt drive 90 mins. to do a monthly clininc with, say 8 different patients and have only 2 or 3 turn up.

It is outrageous isn't it

When I had to have an MRI, I was the only one to turn up out of 4 patients booked in that morning.

I agree that is bad. What sort of clinic do you work in cheshirekitty? When I worked in family planning, I have to say, appointments were largely kept, but then I suppose the consequences of not attending did not bear thinking about.

I once forgot to take my child to their optician appointment at the hospital. I was so focussed on taking them to playgroup as we rarely went that I completely forgot to check the calendar.

I rang as soon as I got home and they were lovely about it but I felt terrible.

Is there any way of implementing a ticket system, whereby you have appointments but, knowing that a certain percentage are unlikely to show, you could let the drop-ins be seen/treated too?

Similar system runs at gp surgery, might not be workable in other areas though.

Good god. Not as if SALT or MRI appointments grow on trees. Liverpool makes you confirm SALT appointments WELL in advance, or they automatically discharge the kid and offer it down the list. Can see why they have to do this, if attendance rates are so poor.

The clinic I work in deals with menstrual dysfunction. I cannot work it out why someone would go to their GP, get an appointment and then not even bother to go. At the least I would expect someone to phone and let us know they where cancelling their appointment.

Our appointments last for 30 mins as they involve scans, biopsys, fitting of mirenas etc, so if someone does not bother to turn up it is 30 mins of twiddling my (and the docs) toes.

No I think you are reasonable, it takes so much sodding time to get an appointment, then some selfish f*cker doesn't turn up, drives me nuts.

I agree in principle, but I'm sure its not always deliberate. Once missed an OP appt for my Ds , I was very , it was a mistake on my part as I had written the date down wrongly. I'm sure that other people just forget too especially the elderly. It would certainly help if people could be reminded nearer the time, I have often been given dates that are months away. On another occasion I simply never recieved the letter.

I have to deal with this every week. It is so selfish and inconsiderate. I work with babies sometimes they are referrals where there could be something wrong but still the parent don't bother coming for their second appointment. It just makes our waiting list longer and deprives the other patients. They could at least phone.

Do as they do in the US: send them an automated reminder 24 hours before hand.

And if they don't show up, charge them a fee.

I cancelled an appointment for ds as he no longer needed it. A few months later I got a letter telling me to call if I wanted an appointment. I didn't want another appointment so I didn't call. A few months after that, I got a copy of a letter sent to the gp saying that I've missed 3 appointments and have 'refused treatment' for my ds. Its total bollocks, I cancelled the appointment because it wasn't needed. I have no idea where the 3 missed appointments have come from but my gp now thinks that I am a terrible mother.

dd3 attends eye clinic at the local hospital. i tried to cancel an appointment as it clashed with dh post-transplant appointment. i tried for 3 days calling the number o nthe letter, and got no answer. in the end out of desperation i went through the switch board and the phone was picked up straight away. this is a re-curring problem with the hospital, you can get never get through direct on the numbers given.

I think a small percentage of those people not turning up can probably be put down to genuinely forgetting, I have done it with my last two midwife appointments at my GP's surgery, Probably because with all the hospital appointments etc I'm remembering I just have too much on.
But 50% has got to me more than forgetting surely.