South Londoners missing appointments cost NHS £400m since 2019
More than £426million has been wasted in the past five years by South Londoners missing NHS appointments.
According to the data, every missed hospital appointment costs the NHS £160.
Freedom of Information requests submitted to NHS trusts by business communication specialist Esendex found that Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust placed fifth and sixth, respectively, for the most missed appointments in the country.
Between the two hospitals, 1,630,903 appointments were missed between 2019 and 2023, costing the NHS a total of almost £261million.
The two South London hospitals came behind Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust, Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, Barts Health NHS Trust and University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, which data identified as the top four trusts in the UK with the most missed appointments.
In response, King’s College Hospital has urged patients to cancel their NHS appointments in good time if they are not able to attend, in order to free up resources for those who need them.
A spokeswoman from King’s College Hospital said: “We are taking steps to tackle non-attendance by making it easier for patients to interact with us.
“We have launched a new patient app called MyChart to enable patients to view their health records and manage appointments at the touch of a button.
“In clinical areas where patients are using MyChart, there has been a reduction in missed appointments by 10 per cent.”
Across South London’s five NHS Trusts, covering Croydon, Lewisham, Greenwich, Lambeth and Southwark, missed appointments cost the NHS more than £426million.
Esendex research found that the most common reasons for patients to miss an appointment were difficulty in arranging carers at the time of the appointment, transport issues, and difficulty taking time off work.
Other common factors included patients being unaware of an appointment or having simply forgotten about it, while some also point to unclear or incorrect information or to having difficulties cancelling or rescheduling.
(Picture: Kolforn / Wikimedia Commons)