Missed dentist appointments cost £700,000

NHS Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale is launching a campaign next week to encourage more patients to keep their dental appointments after revealing that missed appointments cost the organisation approximately £700,000 each.

The ‘Use it don’t lose it’ campaign aims to reduce the number of people who don’t turn up to their appointments.

The system will work by taking patients off dental lists if they miss two appointments without sufficient notification.

With NHS dental appointments in high demand, the missed appointments mean that people who really need to see a dentist don’t get the chance.

Last year 10% of appointment slots were left unused despite being booked by patients.

NHS HMR has announced it is investing £1.3 million to bring an additional eight NHS dentists to the borough; however patients need to become better at keeping or cancelling appointments so that the new services can make a big difference to improving access to NHS dental care.

Primary care dental lead for NHS Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale, Carole Williams said: “We are working really hard to improve access to NHS dentists for our patients but unless more people attend or give ample notice to cancel their appointments, there will still be a clog of unused appointments and backlog of patients in the system,

“We hope that this campaign will act as a prompt to remind people to use their appointment and help to reduce some pressure on our new and existing services.”