Patients miss 8.3% of hospital dates

The Did Not Attend (DNA) rate of 8.3 per cent in 2019/20 was the third highest in the north. The figure refers to the number of patients who did not attend, and failed to give advance warning to hospitals.

This includes patients who cancelled on the same day on which the appointment was scheduled. The Could Not Attend (CNA) rate, which refers to people who missed appointments but did warn Western Trust hospitals in advance, before the day on which the appointment was scheduled, was 10.2 per cent.

The hospital cancellation rate, whereby Western Trust hospitals scrapped appointments, was 12.5 per cent.

“Data on DNA rates are used as an indicator of lost productivity within the health service, in that the hospital is resourced at that point in time to assess the patient, but the patient fails to attend, or fails to give appropriate notice that they can’t attend, which prevents another patient from being seen in the scheduled appointment slot,” according to the Department of Health’s new ‘Hospital Statistics: Outpatient Activity Statistics 2019/20’ report.

Equally, hospital cancellation rates are an “indication of a loss to potential productivity within the Health and Social Care system, as in most cases the patient still requires assessment and will have to be booked into another appointment.”