Hospital prize (From The Argus)

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Hospital prize

8:40am Friday 3rd February 2012 in Your Argus

IF 100,000 outpatients fail to turn up for hospital appointments at a cost of £129 for each missed appointment, does it not occur to someone at the hospitals to phone each patient in advance to see if they are going to turn up? My dentist does the same with me. If the lost £10 million now comes down to less than half-a-million pounds, does this put me in the running for a Nobel Prize?

John Thurloe, Marine Parade, Brighton

Comments(5)

enditonthis says...
1:52pm Fri 3 Feb 12

This was trialled at a hospital I worked at and the issues were:

- out of date phone numbers
- most patients just didn't answer their phones, particularly during working hours, because the hospital came up as a withheld number
with the above two you can't cancel their appointment just because they didn't answer the phone, so no idea if they're going to turn up

- even if you could get hold of the patient and they confirmed they would attend, many still wouldn't (last minute issues) particularly if the reminder call was too far in advance
- most useful if reminded evening before their appointment, however if the patient said they didn't need it/wouldn't turn up it was too late to book another patient in that slot and it was wasted anyway.

People just don't care because they aren't paying for their appointment - I think personally they shouldn't be given a second chance and just discharged after the first time they do not attend.