Concern over higher rate of missed hospital appointments in Scarborough’s ‘most deprived areas’
Councillors have expressed concerns about a high rate of missed hospital appointments affecting residents in Scarborough’s most deprived neighbourhoods.
They say people with medical conditions who live in areas with higher rates of deprivation appear to be missing more appointments than residents in other areas.
Members of the Scarborough and Whitby area constituency committee discussed the missed appointments within the York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
Coun Liz Colling said: “The trust has mapped missed hospital appointments by geography and medical condition, and what it seemed to show was that our most deprived areas have the highest incidences of missed appointments.
“While the trust is interested from an efficiency point of view, I’m really concerned that we have people with a health need who have gone through the necessary hoops and waits to get a hospital appointment, and then for reasons we do not know, have not kept that.”
She added that the trust’s chief executive, Simon Morritt, had said he would be happy to provide the committee with more information.
A spokesperson for York and Scarborough NHS Trust said that the average of missed outpatient appointments across all its hospitals was around 5.4 per cent.
Around 650,000 NHS hospital appointments were missed monthly in England in 2021/22.
Scarborough has some of the highest rates of deprivation in North Yorkshire and NHS research has suggested that 10-20 per cent of patients from the most deprived backgrounds were most likely to miss an appointment, further impacting health inequalities.
The York and Scarborough NHS Trust has this year implemented text reminders for patients to try to reduce the scale of missed appointments.
A spokesperson said: “In the last year, the average of missed outpatient appointments across our hospitals was 5.4 per cent, variable by month.
“We appreciate how busy people are and how easy it can be to forget an appointment or mislay an appointment card.
"It’s been shown that sending appointment reminders can significantly reduce the number of missed appointments.
“Through our text reminder service, not only do patients get reminded of their upcoming appointment, but it also offers them the opportunity to cancel or rearrange, if required, by simply replying.
"This will help us to see more patients, more quickly.
"It’s also a quick and easy way for our patients to manage their appointments.
“The introduction of a text reminder service has correlated with a reduction in missed appointments.”