Appointments at Charnock health are always in short supply, so it worries us that on average 4% of appointments here are wasted either by people either not turning up or by not cancelling appointments they no longer need. This represents over 85 hours of medical time lost a year!
Last year we decided to try and find out why people sometimes missed their appointments and didn't cancel them. We wanted to know if there was anything we could do to make it easier for our patients to remember their appointments.
Over a six month period we sent out a questionairre to every patient who missed an appointment and looked at what they said about what had happened.
Only one in five people returned the questionnaire to us. We were able to see that most of those who replied had booked their appointment themselves, over a week in advance and simply forgotten to come despite writing it down on their calendar or in a diary. Some people felt that they simply did not have an appointment with us at all.
Many of you suggested that a text message or phone call to remind you of the appointment would have been helpful. As a result of this survey we will be looking at ideas like this to see if we can avoid so many wasted appointments.
If you took part in this study then we are grateful to you for taking the time to do this and thank you for your honesty in replying to our questions. If you want to see the results of this survey please click on the link below