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Wednesday, August 12, 2009

"No Shows" Cost NHS Almost $1 Billion Per Year

BBC News -- Patients who fail to keep hospital appointments cost the National Health Service (UK) more than £600 million a year ($990 million), enough to run two medium-size hospitals, data has shown.

Between 2007 and 2008, 6.5 million appointments were missed in the UK, with hospitals losing around £100 ($165) per patient in revenue. Some clinics in the UK are now over-booking patients in anticipation of no shows.

MP: Is this a consequence of "free" health care in the UK? On the one hand, patients tend to overuse healthcare when it is free to them, but they also may tend to engage in more "no show" behavior because healthcare is "free"?

Originally posted at Carpe Diem.
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9 comments:

  1. Machiavelli9998/12/2009 8:09 AM

    Umm..and yet we are the ones who overuse healthcare the most.

    ReplyDelete
  2. geoih8/12/2009 9:02 AM

    If the care is free, then how are they losing revenue? If it's free, then why would you need revenue?

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  3. Anonymous8/12/2009 9:32 AM

    How do they measure no shows? Maybe the patient got tired of waiting because the hospital did not see them at the scheduled time. Don't look for me at 10 am if I had a 9 am appointment. I will wait a few minutes, but my time is valuable, too.

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  4. Anonymous8/12/2009 9:38 AM

    Patients have to schedule appointments months and sometimes years in advance. By the time their "free" appointment comes around they may have moved to another part of the country.

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  5. Kat8/12/2009 11:02 AM

    If the care is free, then how are they losing revenue?

    I think the hospitals are paid out of the public coffers on a capitation system.

    ReplyDelete
  6. KauaiMark8/12/2009 11:19 AM

    "...6.5 million appointments were missed in the UK, with hospitals losing around £100 ($165) per patient"

    Maybe they "passed-on" while they were waiting for their scheduled appointment

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous8/13/2009 4:33 AM

    Same thing with the VA. When you don't pay for something, you have no incentive to use it wisely.

    ReplyDelete
  8. geoih8/13/2009 6:35 AM

    Quote from Kat: "I think the hospitals are paid out of the public coffers on a capitation system."

    So it isn't free. It's just paid for by the people who aren't getting the services. I thought that was called welfare.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Anonymous8/14/2009 5:11 PM

    Maybe the no shows are, um, now dead.

    ReplyDelete

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