National Health Service: Missed Appointments

Debate between Lord Dobbs and Baroness Manzoor

Wednesday 30th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dobbs]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their latest estimate of the annual cost to the National Health Service of patients missing appointments with their general practitioners.

[Baroness Manzoor (Con)]

My Lords, as data on the number of missed appointments in general practice is available for only six months of the period 2017 to November 2018, we are unable to provide a precise estimate of the cost. However, NHS England produced an approximation using the limited data available, which suggested that the cost to the NHS of missed GP appointments was over £216 million a year.

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend. If you add in the number of missed appointments at hospitals as well, the figure from NHS England—not from the Government because they do not have figures—rises to over £1 billion. It is a huge amount of money, yet recently the Government in a Written Answer discussing missed appointments said it did not really matter because,

“staff are able to use time resulting from missed appointments productively … This may include”,

giving,

“support to other patients, or spending time on personal development”.

I hope noble Lords will accept that perhaps that is not sufficient. Does she accept that while of course all patients have a right to the National Health Service, they have a responsibility to it too? I ask her to go back to the department and shake a few sticks there, so that it accepts that the department itself and not just NHS England has a responsibility for this problem, institutes some research as to why so many patients miss their appointments, and comes up with policies that will tackle this massive drain on the resources of the National Health Service.

[Baroness Manzoor]

I am always happy to go back and shake the tree to find out the answers. I am a little bit like the Chief Medical Officer and believe that what you can measure you can manage. To that degree, I agree with the noble Lord that we need greater understanding of where patients are missed and exactly how that is managed. I also agree that there are rights but also responsibilities. However, some patients miss appointments for very good reasons, and we have to understand those reasons so that we do not just think it is irresponsible behaviour; I know it is not. I agree with the noble Lord that if somebody misses an appointment the GP could use the time to cover another issue. It is important if patients miss appointments because 70% or more of them will come back.