Failure to Attend Appointments
Appointments are always in high demand and we are unable to tolerate missed appointments without prior notification so that it can be offered to someone else. Missed appointments result in wasted valuable clinical time and longer delays for appointments for other patients.
We usually have around 140 to 150 missed appointments every month across our clinical team. This is about the equivalent of the number of appointments for a GP for an entire week which is a lot of appointments wasted and undoubtedly creates a far longer wait for you to see a GP.
Patients who regularly fail to attend appointments without giving us any or sufficient notice will receive a warning letter from us. If they then continue to fail to attend without notice they will almost certainly be asked to register elsewhere. This is to protect the interests and access requirements of all our other patients.
General Practice Pressures & Missed Appointments
Day in day out in doctors’ surgeries across London, GPs want to be able to spend more time with their patients and less time on red tape. It’s a fact that 9 out of 10 NHS patients are treated by GPs, not hospitals and not A&E. Despite the anti-GP political rhetoric and some media coverage, the reality occurring in busy GP surgeries day in day out is one of doctors, nurses and other practice staff doing their very best in difficult circumstances, despite workloads doubling in recent years and with no additional funding to accompany it. Across the UK, 1 million people will see a GP today. General practice cares about the whole person, not just their symptoms and will continue doing this for the young, older, vulnerable and chronically ill patients across the capital.
Please assist us by cancelling your appointments if they are no longer required. You can cancel appointments online if registered (if you are not registered for the online service please see on the website how to do this or ask at reception), by phone or by text if you have had a text reminder. Please follow the text instructions carefully to ensure the cancellation is processed. If we have your up-to-date mobile telephone number you should always receive a reminder of your appointment 24 hours before with a facility to cancel should you need to.