Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to tackle inappropriate use of the GP appointment request process.

The Department recognises that missed or inappropriate appointments in general practices are a waste of National Health Service resources. General practices are responsible for managing their own appointments and they set criteria for different appointment slots.

On 21 April 2016, NHS England published the GP Forward View, a package of support to help get general practice back on its feet, improve patient care and access, and invest in new ways of providing primary care. As part of this, there will be a major £30 million ‘Releasing Time for Patients’ development programme to help release capacity within general practice.

The ‘Releasing Time for Patients’ plan will share high impact actions, including reducing missed appointments by redesigning the appointment system, encouraging patients to write appointment cards themselves, issuing appointment reminders by text message, and making it quick for patients to cancel or rearrange an appointment.