Missed Appointments (DNAs)
Tudor Lodge works hard to keep missed appointments or DNAs (Did Not Attends) to a minimum so that all our patients can access appointments when they need them at our practice.
A DNA is where:
- a patient does not turn up for their appointment.
- a patient does not contact the surgery in advance to cancel/change the appointment.
If we don’t know a patient is not attending, or a patient makes a short-notice cancellation less than an hour before a scheduled appointment, we can’t offer the appointment slot to another patient.
This leads to increased waiting times for appointments, frustration for both staff and patients and it’s a waste of precious NHS resources which over 12 months, adds up to weeks’ worth of wasted clinical time.
Patients who are experiencing ongoing difficulties in keeping their appointments should discuss this with the surgery. See Exclusions below for more details.
Tudor Lodge reserves the right to remove patients from our practice list if they DNA three appointments within a 12 month period.
When a patient does not attend an appointment without giving advance notice of more than one hour, the doctor will code the missed appointment on the patient record and we follow the process below:
First DNA
The practice will send the patient a text message to remind them of the importance of attending appointments.
Second DNA
If a patient DNAs two appointments within a twelve month period, a second DNA text message is generated. This tells the patient that should there be a further DNA within the twelve month period, that the surgery may remove the patient from our practice list.
Third DNA
In the event of a third DNA within a twelve-month period, we send a final letter to the patient. A medical team member reviews the case and the patient is removed from our practice list.
Exclusions
- Tudor Lodge does not decide to remove a patient from our list lightly but we have around 10,000 patients relying on us for timely care and access to appointments.
- Lack of organisation or forgetting is not an acceptable reason for non-attendance.
- We don’t remove patients without due consideration of their individual circumstances or reasons for non-attendance. The medical team reserves the right to exclude patients with special circumstances from management under this policy. For example, a patient who has been admitted to hospital or has dementia.
- Patients who are having problems attending appointments should speak to our practice manager.