Patient - Did Not Attend Policy for Appointments

Our GP and Nursing appointments are very valuable and as such we must endeavour to protect them. Unfortunately, some patients do not seem to value these, and do not cancel appointments that they have booked. This means that we are unable to offer the appointment to another patient. 

To continue to offer the access to appointments that we do, we have implemented a very strict ‘DNA’ (did not attend) policy as follows.

The first time a patient does not attend and does not cancel; we write a letter to explain about not attending and advising that if this happens again we will de-register the patient.  If children are in the family, unfortunately they will need to be registered elsewhere too, as unaccompanied children in a household cannot be registered.

When the next appointment is booked, the receptionist will endeavour to remind the patient about this policy and about cancelling the appointment if not able to attend 

If the patient does not attend again, a letter will be sent to the patient to let them know that we have requested de-registration from us on the grounds of non-attendance. The patient will be covered for their medical needs for 14 days allowing time to register with another practice.

We understand that sometimes rare circumstances can occur whereby it is not possible to cancel an appointment; in most circumstances though a telephone call to surgery is possible and that is all it takes for the appointment to be cancelled rather than logged as a ‘non-attendance’.

We do hope that this will never be necessary, but to protect our services for the majority of our patients, this policy is strictly adhered to.