Sir – Alex Regan’s article on the costs of missed appointments mentioning the OUHT’s awareness campaign, focused on car parking, access from Banbury, communication between clinics and centralised appointment services in the hospital as being reasons for missed appointments.

A year-on-year increase of 14.9 per cent suggests that there is more underlying the growth than attitudes, car parks, and systems which are ongoing issues in Oxford.

At Healthwatch Oxfordshire appointments and access are themes which are consistently reported to us. We have heard from patients that:

1: They have been unable to get through on phone lines to cancel appointments

2: They have received letters about missed appointments for appointments they had cancelled 

3: Appointments from the Horton have moved to the JR site making access more difficult

4: Letters for appointments never arrived, or arrived after appointments were due to take place

5: Access to the Churchill and JR in particular being difficult, they are routinely queuing for 45 minutes to find parking

6: Changes in criteria for accessing patient transport services from the county council making it difficult for people to attend appointments

7: Public transit routes from certain areas of the county are long, and involve multiple transfers making it difficult to get to appointments at certain times of the day

8: Appointments were completely lost in the system when patients arrived for their appointment, wasting a journey.

Though we would agree that it is important to educate the public on the costs of missed appointments and to encourage them to attend where possible, we would encourage the OUHT to investigate the causes of missed appointments and seek a balanced campaign of quality improvement addressing all of the issues.

Carol Moore
Head of Projects
Healthwatch Oxfordshire