12:49pm Tuesday 16th March 2010
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.
Instead, 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 Winchester 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 non-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 the first six months of 2009/10.
Latest figures revealed that around 5,150 patients are failing to turn up to their appointments across all four hospitals in the county every month, costing the local NHS £6.1m.
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