Shocking statistics that show thousands of GP appointments were missed by patients have led to calls for fines to be issued for no shows. Figures for one area of the UK show that 2,300 appointments are missed there every day.
The numbers for Birmingham and the Black Country say 847,866 appointments were logged as "did not attend" in the year to April, BirminghamLive reports. This equates to 6.1% of consultations and another 602,609 appointments were "unknown", meaning there is no record of the patient turning up or not.
According to a recent study, the average nine-minute GP consultation costs around £39, meaning that millions of pounds are wasted by no shows. This has led to calls for fines of up to £10 to be issued to people who do not turn up.
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Dr Sarah Jarvis is one of the people who supports fining patients who miss appointments. The GP and clinical director of health website Patient said it can be "incredibly frustrating" when appointments are missed, especially with doctors having heavy workloads.
Professor Martin Marshall, chair of the Royal College of GPs, said there can be many reasons for no shows. However, he urged anyone who knows they will miss an appointment to make sure they call their surgery as soon as possible.
Prof Marshall said: "For some patients, missing appointments can be a sign that something more serious is going on, and that follow-up action is needed. For some, it will have been a case of human error or other aspects of life taking priority.
"For others, particularly if the appointment was longstanding, it may have no longer been needed. And it might not seem like a big deal to miss a 10-minute appointment, but the unintended consequences are that other patients are being kept waiting."
A spokesperson for the Department of Health said: "We have over 1,400 more doctors working in general practice, and have recruited over 18,000 more primary care professionals to boost capacity and ensure more appointments are available for patients. We have invested £520 million to expand GP capacity during the pandemic, on top of £1.5 billion until 2024, and we are making 4,000 training places available for GPs each year, helping to create an extra 50 million appointments a year."
