Back to first base for missed appointments at Winchester (From This is Hampshire)

Back to first base for missed appointments at Winchester

10:01am Wednesday 10th March 2010 in

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BOSSES at the Royal Hampshire County Hospital are getting tough with patients who fail to attend their appointments.

People who miss their appointments without letting the hospital know will not automatically be offered another one. They will be referred back to their GP who will need to request a new appointment that could take extra time and affect any ongoing treatment.

The hospital has started sending letters out to patients explaining the new policy which is also being introduced at Andover War Memorial Hospital, also run by Winchester and Eastleigh Healthcare NHS Trust.

Patients who cannot attend their appointments are asked to let the hospital know as soon as possible. Andrew Cable, in charge of “patient flow” said he hoped the new system, already used by other hospital trusts nationwide, would prompt patients to turn up.

“We hope that it will have an effect on Did Not Attend rates and patients attending their appointments.”

The latest initiative is part of the trust’s major crackdown on missed hospital appointments with patients failing to turn up to 10,500 appointments at either of the two hospitals during this first six months of 2009/10.

The trust has also backed the Daily Echo’s ‘Turn Up or Tell’Em’ campaign calling for people to keep their hospital appointments or cancel them in advance if they can’t make them.

Our campaign, also backed by health bosses at Southampton General and Princess Anne Hospitals, comes after we revealed the staggering number of missed appointments across these hospitals.

Latest figures revealed that around 5,150 patients are failing to turn up to their appointments across all four hospitals every month costing YOUR local NHS £6.1m. Southampton hospital bosses currently have no plans to follow Winchester and will continue to automatically book appointments for people who don’t turn up.

n ONLY patients of Winchester’s Royal Hampshire Hospital are invited to give their feedback on why people might not attend appointments. Email .