GDPUK Discovers NHS Health Board’s Calculations To Justify Charging For Failed Appointments, Are Not Quite…
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- Published: Wednesday, 17 August 2022 07:44
- Written by Chris Tapper
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Complaints have poured in from NHS patients in Shetland after NHS Shetland warned that it may have to consider charging patients for missed appointments.
The Shetland Times reported Director of Dentistry Dr Antony Visocchi as saying “The number of patients not attending appointments is a serious problem for the NHS as a whole and in Shetland, we know we could offer those appointments to other patients.”
A media release by Shetland NHS board circulated in July said that between 1st January and 20th May of this year, “658 appointments with NHS Shetland’s Dental Service was wasted due to patients failing to attend.”
NHS Shetland said “This amounts to a total of 328 hours and 10 minutes of valuable clinical time, which was lost at NHS Shetland sites during this period alone.”
The Shetland NHS Board said “Approximately 44 days were lost in total - this is equivalent to 722 fillings or 361 root canal treatments.”
But a Freedom of Information response to a request by GDPUK showed that only 341 failed appointments were actually with dental surgeons.
The FOI showed that 204 of the appointments ‘lost’ were with Oral Health Education nurses, while failed orthodontic and maxilla-facial accounted for 41 missed appointments. Patients missed 85 appointments with either dental therapists or dental hygienists.
But the Shetland NHS Board’s assertion that the time lost as a result of failed appointments was “Equivalent to 722 fillings or 361 root canal treatments” was called into question after its response to a follow-up FOI request from GDPUK.
We asked for the precise (total) number of hours lost by dentists allotted to the 341 dentist appointments which had been failed.
NHS Shetland revealed that only 193 hours and 50 minutes had actually been lost in appointments with dental surgeons during the period questioned.
In a small poll on Twitter recently, 62% of practitioners said they would require at least one hour to complete a single-rooted root-filling, while the remaining 38% said they would require two hours or more.
These figures starkly contrasted with Shetland NHS’s statement, quoted in the Shetland Times, that the equivalent of 361 root-fillings had been lost.
Dr Visocchi continued “Despite the lifting of Covid restrictions, as a service, we are still working under a great deal of pressure which is why avoiding missed appointment is so important.”
“Unless we see the failures to attend decrease, we will have little choice but to consider the introduction of charges for missed appointments. This is a step we are reluctant to take so we would encourage patients to update us as soon as possible if a cancellation needs to be made.”
After Shetland NHS’s media release, The Shetland Times headlined “Dental service branded a ‘complete shambles’ after NHS comments.
Reporter Andrew Hirst wrote “Complaints poured in following warnings that NHS Shetland could start charging people for failing to show up for their appointments.”
While many people supported the Shetland NHS board’s proposed move to charge patients who fail appointments, the newspaper said “Others have pointed the blame right back at the health board.”
“Patients claimed dental practices had repeatedly cancelled their appointments – often with little or no notice,” the Shetland Times said.
One patient told the paper that he had turned up at the Lerwick dental practice recently, only to be told that his appointment had been cancelled. He said that his appointment had already been delayed by several months to allow for other patients belonging to key groups to be prioritised.
The paper reported the patient as saying the service had “virtually collapsed” to become a “complete shambles.”
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