21st July 2025
More than 15,000 outpatient appointments were wasted in the Southern Health and Social Care Trust last year due to patients/service users not attending their appointment.
From 01 April 2024 to 31 March 2025 the total number of people who did not attend their Consultant outpatient appointment, or failed to give staff sufficient notice to make the appointments available to other patients, in locations across the Southern Trust area was 15,416. The total number of consultant led Outpatient Appointments in the Southern Trust last year was 219,322.
Each missed appointment costs the Trust approximately £250 which equates to almost £4 million lost to our health and social care budget last year. Currently there are unprecedented financial pressures across Health and Social Care in Northern Ireland and the gap between available funding and the cost of maintaining existing services is very significant.
To help reduce non-attendance, for all consultant Outpatient appointments, a patient is sent a letter asking them to phone to agree a date and time for their appointment. A confirmation letter is sent, and outpatient patients are sent 2 text reminders as well.
Assistant Director of Surgery and Outpatients, Lynn Lappin said:
“There are obviously many genuine reasons why patients might be unable to make an appointment however, as these figures show, every missed appointment is a wasted opportunity for someone else to be seen. The appointment slot is actual time with a member of our clinical and nursing staff who are dedicated to patient care.
“We are really appealing for the public’s help in reducing non-attendance for hospital outpatient appointments so that valuable resources and staff time is not wasted, as this will have a significant impact on our services which are already under so much pressure and where so many patients are already waiting too long for an appointment.”
Where possible we would ask patients with an appointment to let the hospital know if they won’t be able to attend and to do this at the earliest opportunity and at least 24 hours beforehand. This will provide the booking team with time to fill the slot with another patient who has been referred for treatment and care.”