If you have an appointment that you are unable to make, please cancel it and let someone else use the time – that’s the plea from local GP practices.
With demand remaining high across the whole health and care community and winter fast approaching, every appointment is needed.
Recent data shows that in one practice alone, there were 29 instances of patients missing various appointments on a single day, meaning six hours of clinical appointment time were lost; time which other patients could have used.
Data for the twelve months up to September 2024 shows:
- General practice offered nearly 4.7m appointments – 5% more than the previous 12 months
- Nearly 1.8m were same day appointments
- Around 74% of appointments were offered within 14 days and 6.4% were offered out of hours
- 2% of appointments were missed.
Hospital data shows a similar picture with over 4000 people a month not attending appointments between September 2023 and September 2024.
Find out more about appointments on the national NHS website.
