Patients 'should take responsibility' for GP no-shows

A patient has said the public needs to do more to stop no-show GP appointments, which are costing the NHS in Nottinghamshire more than £9m a year.

Celia Knight, who attends the Linden Medical Practice in Stapleford, said while the NHS needed to look at the issue, patients needed to "accept responsibility" for missing appointments.

The NHS Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Integrated Care Board (ICB) said patients failed to attend 311,238 appointments in 2025, more than 3.8% of the total booked.

Dr Thilan Bartholomeuz, GP partner at Abbey Medical Group in Blidworth and Ravenshead, said tackling the issue could help alleviate the "national crisis" relating to GP appointments.

Knight, who was secretary of the Linden Patients Participation Group for 15 years, said some people were "abusing" free NHS services when they failed to cancel appointments.

She said: "I think patients feel really frustrated and also angry in some ways.

"There are lots of impacts of missing appointments - one is that it's quite demoralising to the staff booking them - it's wasting their time.

"Another is people have to wait longer for appointments, and the third issue is the cost because the surgery is still paying the GP, but they're not going to be around to provide the service they've been paid for."

Knight said practices, the NHS and patients must all work together to tackle the number of cancellations.

"GP practices need to do something to change the way things are going, to make sure the service works for us," she said.

"But, one thing we can do is to cancel appointments.

"I think patients need to think about the impact on other people if you don't turn up for an appointment.

"It feels like it's acceptable at the moment to not turn up to an appointment, to not bother, and I think that isn't acceptable and we do need to accept responsibility as patients for the NHS."

The number of missed appointments in Nottinghamshire, known by the NHS as did not attend (DNA), decreased in 2025 year-on-year from 312,730 to 311,238, despite the number of appointments available increasing by nearly 200,000.

The ICB said, based on an average £30 per appointment, £9,337,140 was lost to missed appointments in the county in 2025.

Bartholomeuz said his practices had reduced their DNA figures by changing booking systems.

He said the practice had more than 300 DNAs a month in 2024, which reduced to 70 in two years.

The group changed to an online system and is now only booking appointments over the following seven days, rather than weeks in the future.

"A missed appointment not only costs money, it costs care because every appointment missed is one that's not available for another patient," he said.

"We know there's a national crisis when it comes to GP appointments, so just imagine if all of those missed appointments became available.

"How much would that do in addressing that issue?"

The ICB said Nottinghamshire saw a slight decrease in the number of DNAs in 2025, despite surpassing eight million appointments for the first time.

A spokesperson said: "It's difficult to attribute the decrease to any one thing, but certainly the work of PPGs like Celia's will have had an impact, as will increased use of the NHS app, which, where it is used, is making cancelling appointments quicker and simpler."

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