Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to (a) prevent the late cancellation of appointments with GPs and (b) reduce the cost to GPs of cancelled appointments.

NHS England is promoting the use of online booking and cancellation of appointments in general practice. Evidence shows that patients are more likely to cancel an appointment which is no longer needed if the appointment was booked online. Furthermore, some general practitioner (GP) surgeries display information about lost clinic time potentially resulting from cancelled appointments which cannot be re-filled or from patients not attending appointments without any prior notification.

NHS England is trying to reduce the cost to GPs of cancelled appointments by putting measures in place to minimise the number of cancelled and missed appointments.