Buses, vans and cares are photographed on a street in Glasgow, Scotland.
Travel difficulties, communication problems and stress are preventing patients across the UK from keeping their hospital appointments.
Eight million people missed a scheduled appointment last year at a cost of around £960 million ($1.25 million) to the country’s public health service, according to patient engagement firm DrDoctor.
The company, which surveyed 5,003 people who missed at least one appointment over the past two years, said patients face multiple barriers to attendance.
Almost all respondents (93%) said they wanted to attend their meeting. But half of respondents said transportation was a problem. Some patients were referred to hospitals far from home, while others could not afford public transport fares.
More than a quarter of respondents said they were worried they would lose their job or income, while 17% said religious or cultural commitments were hindered.
Psychological issues were also a factor in non-attendance, with more than 40% of patients feeling anxious before their appointment.
Women – who were slightly more likely to miss an appointment than men – were also more likely to cite stress or anxiety as the reason.
Almost one in five patients said miscommunications about their appointment, such as submitting incorrect details or changing the time, banned them from taking part.
Almost a third of patients (29%) said they had tried to reschedule an appointment but were unable to get through to someone on the phone, while 19% said they found the process of changing an appointment too complicated.
The digital health landscape in the UK is fragmented and porous, with different providers using many different digital services. Organizations are often at different stages of digitization and patients can fall through the gaps.
“It’s incredibly frustrating to be told I didn’t turn up for my appointment when the appointment system is clearly not working,” said 29-year-old Londoner Rachel Donovan, who was removed from a hospital clinic list after an appointment glitch. .
“I was recently discharged due to missing an appointment that I didn’t even know was happening as my results appointment was scheduled before my actual scan,” she said in an emailed statement. “I followed twice but never heard anything and had no visibility into what was going on.”
More than half of patients (52%) say they know that missed appointments are costly to the public health system.
But barriers such as transportation, communication and anxiety can lead to patients missing multiple appointments, ultimately adding to long national waiting lists. Nearly half (46%) of patients who missed an initial appointment ended up missing more, research by DoctorDr.
The firm, which provides digital and AI-enabled appointment platforms to British hospitals, says making it easier for patients to book and change appointments would improve overall attendance.
“Over the past 15 years, many sectors of the economy have been fundamentally reshaped by digital technologies. However, the NHS is at the bottom of digital transformation,” read a recent report in England’s state public health system, the National Health Service.
But although it has faced a decade of “missed opportunities”, a “lean towards technology” would increase productivity and help connect hospital and community systems.
Innovations such as AI have “enormous potential” to transform care, while “life science breakthroughs” may find new treatments.
Government ministers say they want to modernize the country’s health system. Health Secretary Wes Streeting is discussing ways to make care data more accessible across organisations, as well as how to develop the public health system’s app for patients, according to CityAM.