Should the NHS charge for such things?

I definitely think that people should be charged for missed dental, medical and hospital appointments.

Except where there go has been a genuine mix up with letters or the ambulance hasn't turned on time,or at all to take them there. Especially with mobility issues. And of course just too ill to attend

Went to my GP.yesterday and the the Surgery post this missed appointments infomation.on paper sheets on the reception room notice board every month.

Something like 10 per cent of people did not turn up for appointments.

I think people who do not attend without a good reason should be charged a £25 fine. And should be given 3 chances. Then struck off as a patient.

God Bless the NHS.

Please don't abuse it.

twaddle

Yes, I can imagine it very easily. I think it's precisely what Reform would do.

Yes.

mokryna, a French friend of a dd - living and working in the U.K. - bitterly resents having to pay IIRC €250 a month for the care of her father in France, since she says he was always a workshy layabout, and a hopeless dad.

No definitely not.

Means tested fees for GP's appointment has already been discussed at Government level.
Having tried and failed twice this week to get a GP appointment, I would happily pay a small fee to secure a slot ! However I expect that those appointments would still be taken up by those that do not have to pay and they would probably still not have to pay for missed appointments either so it would be a fairly pointless system.

JenJenT
Apparently about 75% of the population are signed up to the app. So that’s quite a lot still not using it and relying on the telephone/post. I know some people not signed up - they don’t have smartphones and never will now I’m sure. So any system has to be predicated on that and take their needs into account. I’d like to see more research into why people miss appts rather than just lazy assumptions about those that do in order to better address the problem. Someone up thread posted about making your own appt rather than just passively receiving one (Which I agree with for hospitals) - but that doesn’t apply to GP surgeries.

A child or aged person is using the same service as anyone else.
If its purely based on costs, they cost the same as the next person.
.

The NHS app is very useful, in my experience, when you (or husband in my case) are under the hospital. All letters are posted in the app, with a text to tell him every time there is new correspondence. The hospital also sends reminders via the app for his next appointment a few days beforehand. The GP surgery also sends text reminders the day before. The app means we are not reliant on the increasingly unreliable post. If people are sent electronic reminders, but still don’t show up, crises excepted, one has to wonder how serious their medical issue was in the first place!

AngieLC
Totally agree with charging for meals in hospital… to start… and the A&E charge for people too (not children or aged people)!!
Why/
‘
There’s two ‘why’s’ - why charge for meals at all and secondly, why should children and ‘aged’ people not be charged in A and E but everyone else should be?

Mollygo

It’s a balance really. Norwegian citizens earn higher wages, but they also pay higher tax contributions towards healthcare.
In return for that, I like their idea of a cap on the amount you pay for treatment before it becomes free.

Norway has the same ring up at 8.30 for an appointment system that we do.
Dickens you may know the answer to this.
Do they sometimes have to wait longer than 3 weeks for an appointment like we do once they get through?

Whenever we ask about health care or old age care either from family members living in Europe or even the guide on a coach trip in Portugal, their first comments are about how much tax they are required to contribute.
Successive governments might see that as a way to go here, but I worry that higher taxes would still not get me a quick appointment.

Things have changed considerably since I left Norway in 2007 - and post-pandemic - when a phone call to the surgery could land you an appointment either that day or the next, depending on the urgency of your symptoms, though during holiday periods it could take longer.

I stay in touch with my former work colleagues - but we don't normally chat about GP appointments (!) so I've no idea how 'things' are now and had to look it up.

Urgent Care: In both countries, truly urgent cases are typically seen on the same day. However, satisfaction surveys in Norway show that roughly 63% of patients can reliably secure a same-day or next-day emergency appointment

Routine Appointments: If a condition is non-urgent, Norwegian patients typically wait a few days up to two weeks, depending on how busy their specific doctor is. In the UK, average non-urgent waits frequently stretch into a few weeks.

Bypassing Wait Times

If a Norwegian patient faces a long wait or wants to skip the public system, it is much easier and cheaper to go private than in the UK. Private walk-in clinics (such as Dr Dropin) allow patients to secure a face-to-face appointment in hours. A private GP consultation generally costs between 500 and 800 NOK (£37–£60), and these costs contribute toward an annual state co-pay exemption card (frikort) that makes healthcare largely free once you reach the cap

I don't know how up to date that information is because I used one of these private 'drop-in' clinics back in the late 1990s and paid around NOK 500 (because I was panicking over my symptoms!). The appointment was immediate, lasted around 40 minutes and I came out with a prescription and a recommendation. But, don't we now have the same clinics here, too?

Tax - undeniably, it's higher in Norway. I don't want to take up too much space with too much detail, so I will just say this... generally - in spite of the higher taxation - Norwegian workers enjoy a significantly higher standard of living.

We, my late partner and me, worked in Norway from 1995 to 2007... our finances were a lot healthier when we returned than when we left!

Witzend

My OP was referring to GP appts., not hospital ditto. I do agree that many such missed appts. are the fault of hopeless NHS admin.

My dh was once sent to the wrong centre for a small day-surgery procedure. It was a good half hour away from where he should have been sent, so that was an appt. wasted through no fault of his own.

Then a BiL was sent a letter about his oncology appt. to an address he’d left over 12 years previously! Other letters had been addressed correctly - they just hadn’t deleted his old one.

Luckily the new owners of the house forwarded it, just in time.

A major peeve of mine (don’t know whether it’s changed) was appt. letters being sent to my mother with (diagnosed) dementia, when she’d only hide them or throw them away, and certainly wouldn’t make a note of date and time!

I asked them repeatedly to send a copy to me or my brother as well - this was before we’d managed to activate her old style P of A - since otherwise the appt. would certainly be wasted.

Oh, not, they couldn’t do that, because of ‘patient confidentiality’.
Zero common sense!!

This is happening with my ex-husband. Our children are the contacts for his care, and despite them telling the surgery repeatedly that one of them needs to be present at his appointments (& needs to know about them beforehand so that they can take time off work) the surgery and hospital are still sending the letters to him; he either bins them, hides them - or attends and pretends that there's nothing wrong...! It's driving us all mad - no idea how many appointments he's missed 🙄

AngieLC

Totally agree with charging for meals in hospital… to start… and the A&E charge for people too (not children or aged people)!!

Why/

4allweknow

Witzend And taxation is higher. All we ever hear about is how cheap childcare is in Scandinavian countries.
A new NHS dentist has opened near me. If you sign up you accept that if you miss or give less that 24 hours of cancellation you will pay £1 per minute of the scheduled visit. The place is so busy the company is opening another surgery half a mile away. If people accept paying for dentists why not Drs.

Do you mean paying for a missed appt or paying for an appointment? I think it’s quite usual for dentists to charge for missed appts - with mine it’s 48 hours notice but they take the circumstances into account eg sudden illness.

Witzend And taxation is higher. All we ever hear about is how cheap childcare is in Scandinavian countries.
A new NHS dentist has opened near me. If you sign up you accept that if you miss or give less that 24 hours of cancellation you will pay £1 per minute of the scheduled visit. The place is so busy the company is opening another surgery half a mile away. If people accept paying for dentists why not Drs.

Witzend

Well, I know it’ll never happen, since no government will ever dare to suggest it, but while I was waiting for a blood test at the GP today, there was something on the screen about the mass of missed appointments, and how many millions it was costing the NHS every year.
So why not charge say a tenner, if people can’t be bothered to turn up, or to cancel?

Then I spoke a Swedish friend (who lived in the U.K. for many years) yesterday - she’s in hospital in Stockholm, having fallen and cracked her sacrum, poor thing, but she mentioned the two nice meals every day, for which she has to pay the equivalent of £9 a day. She had told me about such charges before. They are not a new thing.

They also have to pay for GP and A&E visits, IIRC £20 equivalent, but children and IIRC the elderly over a certain age are exempt.

People so often go on about how much better healthcare provision is in ‘other countries’, perhaps especially the Scandi ones, but can anyone imagine any political party here ever including such things in their manifesto?

‘Free at the point of use’ is such a sacred cow.

My son's in Australia at the moment he's had some great health care but he does contribute towards it. When it's FREE like here it's abused, people go to the GP with a blocked nose to get spray free on prescription. It'll never happen but it's normal in most places. €70 for a GP appointment in Southern Ireland.

Like others I can see that given the current disorganisation in dispatching appointment letters it would be grossly unfair to charge for non attendance. Once this is improved, (if ever!) I think that a ‘three strikes and you pay’ policy would be reasonable.

With regard to meals; hospitals are not hotels. We pay for our food at all other times and places so why should food be free because we’re in hospital? This doesn’t happen in other countries, either people pay for their food while in hospital or their families or friends bring food in for them.

I don’t doubt that someone will be along shortly to describe an experience in which charging for food was inappropriate, but there are always going to be exceptions and we shouldn’t make decisions because of these. The situation of the majority needs to be the most important deciding factor, and the majority will be eating, or at least be served, three meals a day while they’re in hospital.

If a standard daily charge was levied for e.g. all adults, this would make the administration straightforward enough once set up. It could be set at a reasonable amount with possible exceptions for certain groups.

The NHS is in a desperate state and further taxation of the wealthy isn’t going to be enough to cure it. Fundamental change is needed and free food is an unnecessary drain on the much depleted coffers

How about people who are taken off to A and E having been dismissed by doctors when something is going wrong for them?

Perhaps then, so should people who play risky sports, along with horse riders, hill climbers, and so on.

Totally agree with charging for meals in hospital… to start… and the A&E charge for people too (not children or aged people)!!

With what I've seen on the tv, people that come out of the night clubs drunk in the early hours and get into fights and end up in hospital with injuries should be made to pay for treatment.

When mu daughter was having chemo, it was imperative thay she didn't go along with a cold, cough, and thay kind of thing.

We spent all morning trying to cancel her appoinent.
No reply, no reply, no reply, whichever way we tried.
Appointment time loomed, so we got in the car and drove to the chemo unit, and i went in to explain.
I got a real ear bashing, and was again given the number we'd been trying all morning, as well as a telling off to pass on to my girl telling her she had no business driving there.

I’m concerned about the cost of missed appointments, too. Perhaps lodging a certain amount of money (a tenner perhaps?) with a practice that will be withheld for a missed appointment might work? Calling on the day you receive late notification may absolve you…not perfect but better than nothing.

I agree with a charge for missing appointments in principal but how could a person prove that they hadn't received an appointment letter which does seem to be something that happens quite a lot nowadays. Appointments could be notified via text but then some would say they don't have a mobile phone.
I also think a co-pay for visiting a GP (as in the US) is a good idea with exemptions for children's appts etc. I would happily pay this even on a voluntary basis ( that is of course if I could actually get a face to face apt with a GP).

We have to pay for a lot of medical things. You have to be on a government pension and not worked or not been paid much to get free stuff. We just accept it. It is usually subsidised, not quite as bad as the USA. I don’t know how the UK manages to afford their NHS, we couldn’t. You are lucky.

My DH has recently tried to cancel appointments with our local hospital with no success. He's now on the receiving end of a telling off.