MISSED appointments cost Swindon’s hospital more than £1 million in just six months.

Official NHS figures show that over 8,630 people failed to turn up to their outpatient appointment at GWH between January and June this year or arrived too late to be seen. On average, each missed appointment costs the NHS £120.

GWH said missed appointments had a significant impact on the NHS.

A spokeswoman for the Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said: “We work very hard as a Trust to run as efficiently as possible and although patients may feel that not cancelling an appointment has little impact on the NHS it unfortunately has a substantial impact.

“This is why we have our easy to use telephone reminder service, which has driven a substantial reduction in the number of patients missing appointments. They get handy reminders by a text message or automated telephone call around a week before their appointment asking them to confirm, cancel or rearrange. It means that we can make sure all of our appointments are used, we can see more patients and sooner.

“We do understand that there are occasions where appointments need to be cancelled or unavoidably missed, Many patients will have multiple appointments to attend on any given day and may run behind, or not be able to attend due to travel hold ups or some may be too unwell at the time.

“It’s encouraging to see the numbers of missed appointments are coming down but we can still do more and we need patients to help us by letting us know as soon as possible if they can’t attend an appointment because we can then offer it to someone else.”

Nationally, almost 2.9 million appointments were missed between January and June. It cost the NHS around £350 million.

Patients who used London North West University Healthcare trust were the worst at showing up to appointments, while people in Cambridge were the most reliable.

Dr Robert Harwood, chairman of the BMA's consultant committee, said: “It is important that no appointments are wasted at a time when the NHS is under incredible stress.

"We should not stigmatise patients who may for legitimate reasons be unable to attend.

"However, we do need the NHS to emphasise through clear publicity to the public that given the current unprecedented pressure, patients should make every possible effort to rearrange their appointment so that another person is able to receive treatment in their place.”