£470,000 Wasted on Missed Appointments

Almost 50 appointments a day being missed at GP practices across the island has cost taxpayers £472,872.

Figures have been released by Manx Care for the period April 2021 to March 2022.

During the period, the equivalent of 48 GP appointments per day were wasted due to patients not attending booked appointments across all 11 practices on the island, with the health service provider saying this financial year is ‘appearing to show similar results’.

Manx Care’s Dr John Snelling said: ‘We encourage patients to consider the impact of booking an appointment with their GP surgery and then not turning up. Our telephone lines are extremely busy and so, where possible, please help us by cancelling your appointment via the Patient Access app.  Alternatively, please email, text (where available) or ring the practice.

‘We absolutely acknowledge and accept that there will be circumstances whereby people cannot attend an appointment due to a last-minute emergency, but this will not be the case for everyone. If the 48 appointments missed every working day could be filled by other patients waiting to see their GP, this would have a real impact across the board.’

The total number of patient “did not attends” (DNAs) from April 2021 to March 2022 was 12,444. The cost of this to Manx Care was approximately £472,872 (based on £38 average cost for each GP appointment – in line with the NHS England/Kings Fund estimation on cost of a nine-minute appointment). The highest number of recorded DNAs in one surgery was 499 in March 2022.

The pattern of high DNA numbers appears to be continuing through 2022-23, with 7,332 appointments already missed between April and September 2022.

Information on how to cancel an appointment is on the Manx Care website, or you can see the best way to contact each practice below. Manx Care will be publishing GP practices’ DNA data each month going forward.