Extent of missed appointments revealed

Statistics from NHS England show patients did not attend a total of 30,675 outpatient appointments at the Gawber Road site in 2022/23 - up from 29,995 the year before.

This accounted for six per cent of the 496,485 appointments that were scheduled at the hospital.

The figures are revealed despite the latest statistics showing that more than 20,000 people were waiting for routine treatment at the hospital in July. Of those 181 had been waiting for longer than a year.

The median waiting time from referral to treatment at Barnsley Hospital was ten weeks at the end of July - the same as in June.

Nationally, a record eight million of 124.5 million appointments - the equivalent of 6.4 per cent - were missed.

It is the highest proportion of missed appointments since 2017/18, when 6.7 per cent went unattended.

The Patients Association said there are eight million different stories behind the missed appointments, and called on healthcare professionals to be ‘curious’ about why patients are absent.

The figure also showed hospitals cancelled 12.1 million outpatient appointments across the country - a rise of four per cent on the year before, and the highest figure since records began, excluding 2020/21, which was affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Of these, 65,565 were cancelled by Barnsley Hospital.

There were 95.9 million attendances nationally, up on the last two years but slightly below pre-pandemic levels.

Meanwhile, patients contacted hospitals and cancelled 7.9 million appointments, also down on before Covid-19.

At Barnsley Hospital, 53,635 appointments were cancelled by patients, while there was a total of 346,060 attendances.