Missed appointments in London have cost NHS hospitals nearly a billion pounds in four years, according to new estimates.
A total of 388,435 appointments were missed in the capital between 2019 and 2023 – the second highest figure of any region in England, behind the West Midlands.
The figures were released following Freedom of Information Requests by healthcare communications firm Esendex, which asked NHS trusts to share how many scheduled appointments were missed at their hospital sites over the last five years.
Each missed appointment costs the NHS £160, according to the health service, meaning that the NHS in London lost £994,392,960 in a four-year period.
Barts Health Trust NHS London had the third most missed appointments in the UK, with 1,024,945 missed since 2019. The missed appointments are estimated to have cost the Trust £163 million.
Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Trust in central London saw 903,743 appointments cancelled, costing an estimated £144 million.
They were followed by King’s College NHS Foundation Trust, where 727,160 appointments were cancelled with an estimated cost of £116 million.
Around half of all trusts in London responded to Esendex’s FOI request.
London was also highly prevalent in the trusts with the most missed appointments, with eight of the top 20 trusts (40 per cent) based in the capital.
Patients miss hospital appointments due to a variety of factors, such as issues with transport and accessibility or poor communication.
The figures are likely to be impacted by the Covid pandemic, which caused a significant number of cancellations.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting warned last week that patients could be fined for missing health appointments in future.
He told Times Radio: “At this stage it’s not something I’m looking at doing, but once we’ve got the system working effectively, if we still have this problem of missed appointments then I might be more open-minded.”
The concept of charging patients for no-shows was also floated by former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak when running to be Conservative leader in 2022.
Chris Gorman, Head of Professional Services at Esendex, said: “Missed healthcare appointments are hugely frustrating for everyone in healthcare - not least for organisations like the NHS which has to shoulder the financial and administrative burden of no-shows.
“There are a huge number of reasons which might explain why someone misses a healthcare appointment, whether that’s difficulty in taking time off work, being unable to arrange care at the time of the appointment, or transport challenges that prevent people from getting there.
“Perhaps the most frustrating factor is when patients are unaware of a scheduled appointment, have the wrong information, or simply forget about it. While many healthcare providers rely on letters or emails to update patients about their appointments, these can easily be missed, lost or left unread, so it’s clear providers need to find new ways to reduce no-shows.”
