To think this needs fixing (NHS)

[HelenaWaiting]

This morning, my next door neighbour collapsed and was rushed to hospital. Her husband knocked on my door and explained that he was due at another hospital for an outpatients appointment. He gave me all the details and asked would I call. I spent all morning trying to call. There was no response on the direct line. I even got hold of the main switchboard and asked them to put me through - they kept putting me through to A&E. This is not the first time I have encountered this problem.

AIBU to think that the NHS can produce as much patient-blaming missed appointment data as they like, but unless they find a more efficient way of patients contacting them, the issue is never going to be resolved.

No news yet on my neighbour.

The nhs is a huge mess of waste, inefficiency and admin nightmare. We should stop just throwing more money into it without guarantees to reform and reduce waste and inefficiency.

Absolutely, OP. It is impossible to cancel/rearrange a lot of appointments at my local (huge) hospital because the designated phone number rings out; and the digital service doesn’t work.

I’ve had to rearrange through PALS before now.

It's such an inefficient system, I phoned to reschedule & received confirmation of rescheduling. I then got put to the back of the list for missing appointment & not rescheduling. Took numerous calls to sort it out.

Had another appointment, received a letter & a text to say "DO NOT COME TO HOSPITAL, THIS IS A PHONE APT". Day off the appointment the consultant phones and says why aren't you here 🙄😆

Fully agree. I have seen plenty of personal examples where the fault is not the patient's at all.
My GP used to have a board with how many appointments had been missed the previous month. Well, I always looked at it, looked at the jammed packed waiting room and thought, well it makes zero sense! They already have far too many appointments booked at any time I come here, how is that they still had another 10 or so that did not turn up! It always puzzled me and I know now all of this has to do with their system inefficiency. Both GPs and NHS need that sorted, indeed.

Yeah it should be much easier to speak to a doctor's receptionist or a direct department without all of the bloody bureaucracy

I used to schedule all my maternity appointments just after the lunch break and I would book the first appointment. Repeatedly reminded not to be late, never ever did the clinic open or run on time. Sometimes my appointment was 1hr plus late.

I’ve been written to and told I didn’t attend an appointment and referred back to my GP, when I actually turned up for the appointment and I still have the check-in ticket to prove it.

The consultant didn’t like the fact that I collapsed in the waiting room outside his office after waiting in an overheated, overcrowded corridor (he was by then running 90 minutes late), and two nurses attended to me and had me taken to A&E.

His gastroenterology clinic has now been taken over by a decent service that’s privately contracted by the NHS in order to clear the waiting lists. We’re talking diagnostic tests, treatments, follow-ups, the lot.

The staff are now pleasant and efficient and you get reminders and a telephone call on the morning of the appointment to check you’re able to get there. The NHS used to be like this. One bloke somehow had a disproportionately negative effect on a whole department. And fiddled the DNA stats to blame his patients till he couldn’t get away with it any longer.

This is why whenever I hear suggestions of fining people for missing appointments I think, good luck figuring out who "deserves" to be fined and who was a victim of poor admin or an inability to cancel an appointment.

Bet the poor man will get a snotty automated letter too.

Well I had a hospital appointment today as I happens.
I got to the hospital with a hour to spare and it’s just as well I did. My appointment letter said to use the automated check-in in the department. I saw signs to the department which was on a higher floor, went to that floor but couldn’t seem to see any more signs but, fortunately,a passing member of staff directed me. I got the department to find that the automated check-in was out of order. I went down to the main reception but staff member there insisted I had to go out of the building and enter by another entrance although I explained I had already been to the department. I went to that entrance and was able to use an automated check-in there but still got an instruction to see the receptionist there to be told where to go! She seemed quite flustered by having a queue of three people. I was, of course, sent to the department I had already been to! Surely if you are going to have automated check-in you could programme it to confirm the appointment location for the patient.

All of this took me over half an hour but at least I actually got seen earlier than my appointment time - if I’d not got to the hospital early I am concerned I might not have got seen.

Sometimes we work on a percentage not showing up when booking appts, so even if people don't show, the clinic time is still used effectively. If we didn't do that waiting lists would be even longer. It is stressful though on the odd occasion every patient shows up!
For this specific clinic, as its so expensive to run, our admin call and book the appts over the phone, only booking if person confirms can attend. Letter and text and sent. Along with another text 48hrs before. And a direct email to cancel if unable to attend. And still we have no shows!

Fully agree. It is a nightmare getting hold of anyone. I was having a course of treatment a few years ago, attended about 6 appointments no problem, was due to attend the next and my toddler had a seizure that morning and was taken to (a different) hospital. I tried countless times to contact them about my appointment, when someone eventually answered the phone I was put through to the wrong department (this happened a few times). Eventually, my appointment time passed and I gave up to focus on my son. Hospital discharged me back to the GP for missing my appointment. When I eventually spoke to someone they more or less just shrugged and said tough luck.

But this particular surgery was always packed. Morning, afternoon, Mon till Fri. Any single time you went in.
They have gone through serious changes with their appointment booking system. They do not longer display the non attended number of appointments.
It was horrible. Not just difficult to deal with, but between impossible and nightmarish.

Now it is getting better. The receptionist are mostly nice and helpful. The waiting room is not fully packed anymore, but a flow of patients, with some spare chairs and all!

I am not moaning, honestly, I am 47, I had my good share of GP experiences and this place just was really badly organised.

Yes heaven Forbid you’re even a minute late but you’re also expected to wait all day for any delays.

YANBU
Several years ago DD had orthodontic treatment at the hospital. Each appointment usually meant her missing 2 hours of school and me having to take a day off work. A few times either i was unable to take that day off, or she had exams at school, so I called the number on the letter that you were instructed to call in the event you couldn't make it and either spoke to someone or left a message on an answerphone. Then, when we went for subsequent apts we were reprimanded by both the receptionist and the orthodontist for not attending the previous appointment and wasting it. (I called at least a week in advance Each time)

Rubbish. I’ve seen the NHS blamed in this way for many years. Sometimes it’s true, but often it’s politics, one way or another, including from those doing the accusing.

And then we have the farce of trying to cancel appointments after someone dies and the different departments not being linked. My poor mum was getting automated calls from hospitals for months after my father died, reminding her about appointments and saying he had missed them, with no appropriate option to press X to speak to a human being. He had died in one of the hospitals that kept calling.

This is what happens when the NHS makes loads of admin staff redundant to save money. My Trust is currently looking at culling about 500.

If there are no admin staff you don't get a letter telling you about the appointment. Or there's no one to answer the phone if you ring.

How often do you see people saying the NHS has got too many non frontline staff? This is what some of them (used to) do, sort appointments out.

Yes, but in this day and age it shouldn’t take that many staff to sort out appointments! They’ve put the cart before the horse by getting rid of staff before having this in place, but ultimately there are a lot of inefficiencies in the process itself. Who else uses letters instead of text/email theses days…

Not that I’m happy that humans are being replaced by machines, but we’re fighting a losing battle in that front. We should at least be getting the effectiveness that comes with dealing with automated services. With the NHS it’s the worst of both worlds!

I always receive a text confirming my appointment, then a reminder and both have a link to click if you need to cancel or rearrange.

Obviously this only works for those with suitable mobile phones and not in an emergency when asked to cancel on behalf of someone else.

My NHS Hospitals Trust has finally abandoned the ‘link to click if you need to cancel or rearrange’ as there was no-one passing the data generated on to the outpatient clinic involved.

’Did not attend’ letters, referrals back to GPs, and complaints to PALS were being generated in large numbers.

Patients like me did draw it to attention to this for years but it kept being blamed on lockdown/covid. Finally in late 2025, it has stopped.

Well I can only say that it works for me. I needed to cancel and rebook just a couple of weeks ago.
I do find it bizarre and annoying how much individual trusts vary. The nhs service should be standard across the country both in this issue and others.

I had a similar problem with my mum a few weeks ago. She was randomly allocated an appointment at the hospital which clashed with another appointment she was already booked there for. I tried for days to get through to them via the phone number provided.
In the end, I could only sort it out by calling the consultant's secretary to explain the problem and she sorted it out for me by rescheduling the new appointment.
If mum wasn't under a designated consultant for her condition I'd probably never have been able to sort it. It really shouldn't be this hard.

It’s been this way for years. Phoning these places is just impossible. It’s totally shameful and really quite 3rd world.

my step father stopped going to his hospital appointments a few years before he died. They were such a colossal undertaking - not able to park near hospital (mobility issues), made to sit and wait for 3 hours (needed packed lunch as diabetic), messed around etc, not helped. He said he’d rather take his chances and die than attend any more appointments.

Indeed. Invest in a standard system. One that makes sense and it is user friendly.
We have texts here, for the NHS. Your apointments are sent by text when they book them at the time they are on the phone to the patient. They also send by phone and letter the ones they schedule. The text always makes it. Letters can cut it too short to book time off.
Our dentist does the same. Sending a text a few days before the appointment. GP has just started to do the same.

My brother works at our local hospital back home. It serves about 200k people and they deal with about 500k outpatients appointments a year. Plus everyone phoning and chasing.

realistically your neighbour could have gone to the appointment.