50,000 missed appointments last year

Consultants saw almost 150,000 patients at the Londonderry hospital over the year but 4,325 new patients and 10,454 review patients failed to turn up for scheduled appointments.

Across the larger Western Trust the patterns was repeated with a whopping 52,034 patients failing to arrive in time for planned appointments. Over 35,000 of these were new patients and over 16,000 review attendances.

The figures are contained in newly published statistics for hospital outpatient activity in 2009/10.

The Sentinel highlighted the issue of non-attendance at Altnagelvin earlier this year.

When allied health professionals - for example physiotherapy, occupational therapy and podiatry - were taken into account nearly 30,000 outpatient appointments were missed at the facility during the 2009 calendar year.

In response to this state of affairs Sarah Groogan, Western Trust Director of Planning and Performance told the paper: "The Trust has been taking action to reduce the number of patients not turning up for an appointment and failing to notify the hospital.

"The cooperation of the public is essential if this non-attendance rate is to be reduced further. There may be good reasons why people are not able to make an appointment and the Trust acknowledges that on occasions it may have to reschedule a clinic, for example if an essential staff member is sick.

"However, where possible we would ask patients with an appointment to let the hospital know if they won't be able to attend and to do this at the earliest opportunity.

"As part of its attempts to reduce non-attendance, the Trust has in place a system for booking outpatient appointments where patients are given a choice of dates and times of clinics so a time to best fit their schedule can be arranged.

"The Trust has also been alerting people to the numbers of missed appointments by publicising non-attendance figures in outpatient areas."

But the trend has continued throughout the first six months of 2010 with more than 7,000 people failing to show up for appointments at Altnagelvin.

Of 72,742 outpatient appointments from January to June at the hospital, 7,034 people didn’t turn up – a non-attendance rate of 8.8 per cent.