I WRITE in response to your article in yesterday's Argus regarding that 32,295 outpatient appointments were missed purely because people had failed to show up for them.

Sometimes the hospitals themselves will cancel outpatient appointments and then will fail to notify you.This has happened to me in the past when I had to attend the Royal Sussex County hospital in Brighton one time and I wasn't even informed of the cancellation until I got there.

However, they were adamant that they had sent a text to tell me but I never received it. Then the Patient Advisory Liaison Service (PALS) investigated it and found out that one was never sent to me in the first place.

I had also incurred travel costs as a result but I just wrote it off as being one of those things that happens.

Then one time when my parents were alive, going back to 2006, my mum had an early morning outpatient appointment with a consultant at the Princess Royal Hospital in Haywards Heath.

However, after my dad drove her there from Southwick, they only found out there and then that the appointment had been cancelled because the consultant was on holiday.Yet nobody informed them beforehand of this and they too incurred travel costs which they also wrote off.

While it's not acceptable that people don't attend their hospital appointments, these are difficult times.

Sadly my sister caught Covid-19 while she was an inpatient at the Royal Sussex County hospital, although she did get better and was discharged eventually.

However, the one place that you cannot guarantee being totally safe from Covid-19 is in hospital, despite still being in the best place to aid recovery.

So perhaps this is the main reason why patients have not attended at this time.

If the NHS trusts start charging patients for missed appointments at any time, which they might well do, then they have to expect patients being able to claim for cancelled hospital appointments where they are informed either at short notice or not at all.

Mark Aldous

Melrose Avenue

Portslade