PATIENTS in Buckinghamshire have failed to attend tens of thousands of hospital appointments.

Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust pleaded with patients to let them know in advance so that appointments can be given to others. 

The frustration comes after NHS England figures showed patients didn’t attend 38,000 outpatient appointments at the Trust in 2022-23, which is down from 39,455 the year before.

It accounted for five percent of the 760,755 total appointments scheduled.

Andrew McLaren, Chief Medical Officer at Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust, said: “We understand that patients may need to rearrange or cancel appointments for a variety of reasons but urge them to let us know in advance so that we can offer the appointment to someone else.

"This is more important now than ever, given the number of appointments we have had to reschedule due to industrial action." 

For the first time, the number of missed appointments across England topped eight million in 2022-23.

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A record number of eight million appointments out of 124.5 million were missed (6.4 percent), which is the highest proportion of missed appointments since 2017-18, when 6.7 percent went unattended.

The Patients Association urged healthcare professionals to be “curious” about why patients are absent as there are eight million different stories behind each missed appointment.

The Association’s chief executive Rachel Power said many patients who miss appointments are at risk of health inequalities and she urged for the NHS to be compassionate.

Buckinghamshire Healthcare cancelled 97,555 appointments.

Nationally, hospitals cancelled 12.1 million outpatient appointments – a rise of four percent on the year before.

At Buckinghamshire Healthcare, 84,205 appointments were cancelled by patients, while there were 540,695 attendances.