MISSED appointments have cost Essex NHS trusts more than £130million in five years.
Freedom of Information requests submitted to NHS trusts across England and Wales revealed that Essex NHS Trusts reported a total of 814,289 missed appointments between 2019 and 2024.
The research, conducted by business communication specialist Esendex, calculated the financial impact based on the NHS’s own data which shows that each missed appointment costs £160.
East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust (ESNEFT) reported a total of 272,792 missed appointments in five years.
This cost the trust more than £43,600,000.
Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust recorded more than twice as many missed appointments, with 541,497, which cost the trust a whopping £86,600,000.
Altogether, the missed appointments have cost the Essex trusts more than £130million.
Sharon McNally, interim chief nursing and quality officer for Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust, said: “Missed appointments can happen for many reasons, but it has an impact on our overall waiting list and reduces the amount of people we can see in our clinics, which can delay treatments.
“We encourage all patients to contact us to cancel or rearrange their appointments if they can’t make it, so other patients can benefit.
"We have introduced Deep Medical as an AI solution last year, which has been reducing the number of people missing their appointments. The AI system targets more appointment reminders to patients at risk of missing appointments and finds more slots for booking that would have otherwise been lost.
“This benefits clinics across the Trust, helping us create a further 45,000 appointments each year."
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The Esendex research found that in 2024, each NHS trust across England and Wales had an average of 51,168 missed appointments.
When applied across all NHS trusts, this total could reach 11.8million missed appointments at a total cost to the health service of £1.9billion every year.
To view Esendex’s research in full visit: https://www.esendex.co.uk/blog/post/cost-of-missed-nhs-appointments/
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