I have been to the hospital today for my appointment at the eye clinic, they actually rang earlier in the day to ask if I could come in earlier due to cancellations. When I got there they said that they had a lot of people just not turning up. They said it’s the time of the year with Xmas etc. That is so wrong with so many people waiting for appointments, it’s hard to get an appointment and I am often on a cancellation that I get in. End of moan.😁

I agree entirely.

Our NHS is a precious thing and needs to be used properly.
It also needs to be cherished and protected.

(and properly funded) FL2 XS SD4 Auto 2010 2012-2017 (21k - 91k miles) (MY2011)
FL2 Metropolis SD4 Auto 2014 2017- (16k - 79k+ miles) (MY2015)
Metro in its 11th Year of (Extended) LR Warranty / Full LR Service History
(Expensive, but Trouble/Worry free - hopefully?)

Personally I think it is properly funded.

I don’t know the answer, but people do tend to not appreciate something if they can get it for free and very easily. Not saying that privatising it is the answer.

I have just had to deal with the opposite.

Mother-in-Law came around as someone proporting to be the HNS have cancelled her appointment. Bearing in mind she is in her 80s and has had family telling her for years not to answer suspicious text messages or phone calls - she doen't have email.

So I had a look, sure enough it was from the NHS, telling her that because she hadn't answered the previous message asking her to confirm the appointment they had cancelled the appointment that she had been waiting a year for AND had removed her from the waiting list. A letter confirming this was supposed to be in the post a week ago - not arrived yet.

She has stated on several occasions that the ONLY method of contact is by post, as she has been tricked in the past by callers pretending to be who they aren't. Would you click on a link from an unknown source, that then asked for your name & date of birth & postcode! before it would give you access to something that you hadn't asked for?

Basically if you aren't in her phone book she doesn't answer (and often if you are), same with messages.

Don't get me started on the NHS and postal messages, when Gill was in the final stages of cancer we would often get letters telling us of an appointment days even weeks after the supposed appointment date. I can feel my blood starting to boil even now 3 years later just thinking about it. Tangiers Orange - gone, missing her
Replaced by Ewok what a mistake - now a happy Disco Sport owner

Just a driver wrote:

I don’t know the answer, but people do tend to not appreciate something if they can get it for free and very easily. Not saying that privatising it is the answer.

Fair enough charge the customers £50 for a missed appointment, but lets play fair and £50 per day for every day you have to wait past the 31 day target for cancer treatment after diagnosis. The waiting is terrible, this stuff is eating away at your loved one, there's nothing that you can do and it would appear that nobody cares.

The vast majority of NHS staff do care, a great deal, but even nurses can't do two things at once.

Or £10 for every letter that arrives after the appointment date, make it so expensive that they actually send them out before the due date AND recorded delivery so there is no chance of blaming it on the patient, which is how I am sure that it's operating now. 90% of patients don't turn up - because they don't actually know about the appointment they have been waiting months for, but it looks good in the statistics. We had x thousands of appointments, OK nobody actually knew about them so they could all be 30 seconds.

Then we kick them off the list, because they didn't turn up for the appointment that they didn't know about. So the waiting time goes down as the clock starts again. Tangiers Orange - gone, missing her
Replaced by Ewok what a mistake - now a happy Disco Sport owner

Lets be fair and start actually paying the going rate to see a consultant £200 per 10 mins and £thousand for procedures as your NI payments dont hack it!

I don’t think that money was the issue, common decency and manners not to attend or give a cancellation notice was the problem.

This was printed on my appointment letter

Most patients attend their appointments. A missed appointment costs the NNUH
approximately £180. If you cannot attend or no longer require this appointment please call
 01603 287151 or 01603 287217 as soon as possible so we can reallocate it to another
patient. If you do not attend or cancel this appointment more than twice your referral will be
reviewed by a doctor and we may return you to the care of your referrer.
Patients have a right to start consultant led treatment within 18 weeks unless they choose
not to or it is not clinically appropriate. Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) are obliged to
provide assistance or advice to those patients who have or will wait longer
than 18 weeks. This right is explained in the NHS constitution and on the
NHS UK website (www.nhs.uk) under ‘guide to waiting times’.

simply do not get ill, if your ill your no longer a 'working man' so Starmer has no interest in you. At work
At home

"I can't always believe facts I read on the web" - Charles Dickens

winner by default of the tractor vs caravan race

Starmer won’t even say what a working person is.

He probably has no idea, just like he can't say what a woman is..... 2014 Freelander 2 TD4 Manual Dynamic
1956/7 88" Series One Land Rover
1956/7 88" Series One Land Rover - undergoing restoration

Looks like he doesn't know what a gang is either!