HC Deb 08 May 1984 vol 59 cc726-7
11. Mr. Adley

asked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will indicate the percentage of patients with appointments at National Health Service hospitals who failed to turn up and were thus listed as not having attended for the last 12 months period for which figures are available; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. John Patten

We do not collect this information at present, but the health services information steering group has recommended in its first report that the number of failed appointments should be recorded in future. Measures to encourage patients to keep their appointments are for local decisions by health authorities.

Mr. Adley

Is my hon. Friend aware that doctors and consultants practising in the Wessex area who are known personally to me have brought this issue to my attention and that one of them described it as a scandal? It is extremely irritating to the medical people concerned and enormously expensive for the entire Health Service. Does my hon. Friend accept that this is so, and does he accept also that his Department, if it is considering ways of cutting costs, should be giving close and serious consideration to this problem?

Mr. Patten

We must address ourselves to this problem. There are about 36 million outpatient appointments in any one year in the Health Service. Unfortunately, delays sometimes occur. The picture seems to be patchy. I am bound to say that sometimes the blame lies with the rather poor organisation of some hospitals. On other occasions patients fail to turn up on time for appointments, or fail to turn up at all. I wish that more consumers of the service would heed the advice of the Consumers Association that it is extremely important that they turn up on time.

Mr. Campbell-Savours

Is the Minister aware that for many outpatients a hospital appointment means the loss of half a day's pay plus the cost of travel to the hospital? Should he not take that into account and arrange in special cases for some adequate compensation to be paid for those on benefit and for those who are at work but who cannot earn enough to live on?

Mr. Patten

This is why it is critically important to have a good and direct management system within the NHS to ensure that arrangements for patient appointments are good and that the doctors and nurses deliver to the consumer the care that is required at the time of the appointment. It is up to us to deliver those goods. That is why the recommendations of the Griffiths report are so important.

Mr. Rowe

Is my hon. Friend aware—I refer to my experience in recent months — that the variation in hospital practice is very wide? Where that practice is good, it is so much better than the worst that more steps could profitably be taken to generalise the best practice rather than leave it to the haphazard administration of individual hospitals.

Mr. Patten

Just before Christmas that point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Smith) in a similar question. It is right that the best organised outpatients departments are extremely good and provide a model for other parts of the service. We need better information. That is why the Körner committee's recommendations will be adopted and why we intend to do all we can to disseminate good practice in the service.

Mr. Skinner

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, at any given time, the number of people who do not turn up for their appointments is small compared to the number of Members of Parliament who fail to keep their appointments and turn up for work, as was shown by the voting figures last week, when under one third of Members of Parliament turned up to vote?

Mr. Patten

The force of the hon. Gentleman's question would be much stronger if he were supported by more of his hon. Friends.

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