GP's Support Missed Appointment Fines

62 percent of General Practices would support patient fines for missed appointments according to a survey by the Doctor Patient Partnership. The report found that 17 million GP appointments are wasted each year because patients fail to arrive for their appointments. This means over 2.5 million hours of GP consultation hours are lost.

Whilst experts acknowledge that a fine system would be difficult to administer, NHS staff believe something must be done to improve the time and money wasted by missed appointments.

Simon Williams, director of policy at the DPP stated "Patients need to be made aware of the impact of missed appointments and the cost to their NHS, but they also need to take responsibility and make sure they don't add to the pressure on services which are already over-burdened".

Monday, 10 September 2001