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What is the real cost of missing your appointment?

01 September 2014

Each month 300 patients do not attend (DNA) their appointment. The average cost of an outpatient attendance is approximately £100. Over the course of a year this totals more than £350,000—money which could be re-invested into patient services.

Each month 300 patients do not attend (DNA) their appointment. The average cost of an outpatient attendance is approximately £100. Over the course of a year this totals more than £350,000—money which could be re-invested into patient services.

Patients who do not let us know that they cannot attend their appointment prevent another patient from being seen. We are working hard to reduce the number of DNAs and improving how we communicate appointments—but we need your help!

If you find that you are unable to attend an upcoming hospital appointment at Chelsea and Westminster, we have made it easier for you to reschedule.

In order to ensure that we provide a high quality, timely service for all patients, we can only reschedule your appointment once for social reasons, and once for medical reasons (ie twice in total), or you will be discharged back to the care of your GP who will then need to re-refer you.

Please note that we cannot reschedule appointments due to take place within the next 24 hours.

If your appointment is more than 48 hours away

Email us the details of the appointment you wish to reschedule along with your name, address and hospital number to .

The appointments team will respond to your email within 24 hours and offer you a choice of two different appointment dates.

Alternatively you can call us—details in the next section.

If your appointment is 24–48 hours away

To reschedule by telephone, please contact our appointments team Mon–Fri, 8am–6pm on 020 3315 6666.

Contributors
George Vasilopoulos