Hospital patient ‘no-shows’ cost State almost €12m last year

The failure of patients to turn up for hospital appointments cost the State almost €12 million last year, it has emerged.

Minister of State Catherine Byrne said that according to the latest Health Service Executive data, 135,000 patients did not attend new appointments last year while 343,000 failed to show up for review appointments, a non-attendance rate of about 13 per cent.

Ms Byrne said “the administrative cost associated with non-attendance is approximately €25 per patient visit”, which totalled €11.95 million. “Even more significant, however, is the loss of allocated clinical time which could have benefited another patient.”

Mr Neville expressed exasperation that the use of a messaging system to remind patients of their appointments was still not in place

Ms Byrne was responding to Fine Gael TD Tom Neville, who expressed his concern that at University Hospital Limerick, in his constituency, almost 17 per cent of total hospital appointments were “no-shows”. There were 35,536 new appointments with more than 19,000 patients failing to show up for their appointments.

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Cataract list

He said that in the cataract waiting list at the hospital up to 140 extra patients could be seen at the hospital if the number of patients failing to show for appointments could be cut.

Mr Neville expressed exasperation that the use of a messaging system to remind patients of their appointments was still not in place across the State’s hospital system.

“The text-messaging service is 20 years old but still we are pushing, scraping and fighting to try to have a text-messaging system up and running in the public service. It should have been up and running years ago,” he said, pointing to Ireland’s reputation as a leader in the use of information technology.

“We need to get behind the figures to have the necessary intelligence, data and analytics,” he added. “That is what happens in every business that survives.”

Ms Byrne agreed but added: “It is remiss of patients not to keep their appointments.”