One in five don’t turn up
Thursday, 21 January 2010
ONE in five appointments with allied health professionals at the Roe Valley Hospital are wasted by patients who do not turn up.
The figures have been released by the Western Health and Social Care Trust (Western Trust), who are urging local people to consider the valuable time and resources they are wasting by failing to keep appointments or to notify the hospital when they cannot attend.
In the 2009 calendar year, the non-attendance rate for appointments such as physiotherapy, occupational therapy and podiatry was 21.7 percent, representing 341 patients not turning up.
Sarah Groogan, Western Trust Director of Planning and Performance, said when a person does not keep their appointment, it means valuable time is wasted which could be used by another patient.
She said: "The Trust has been taking action to reduce the number of patients not turning up for an appointment and failing to notify the hospital. The cooperation of the public is essential if this non-attendance rate is to be reduced further. There may be good reasons why people are not able to make an appointment and the Trust acknowledges that on occasions it may have to reschedule a clinic, for example if an essential staff member is sick. However, 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.
“As part of its attempts to reduce non-attendance, the Trust has in place a system for booking outpatient appointments where patients are given a choice of dates and times of clinics so a time to best fit their schedule can be arranged. The Trust has also been alerting people to the numbers of missed appointment by publicising non-attendance figures in outpatient areas."
Across the Western Trust in the 2009 calendar year a total of 23,197 people failed to turn up for an appointment arranged with a consultant or nurse at Western Trust hospitals - a non-attendance rate of 8.8 percent.
In that period a total of 239,243 outpatient attendances for such appointments was facilitated by the Western Trust.
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