NHS: Postal Services
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has made any estimate of the proportion of missed appointments which have resulted from delays in receiving posted letters.
Answered by Karin Smyth
The monitoring of National Health Service patient correspondence, including appointment letters, is the responsibility of individual NHS providers. Data is not held centrally on the reasons why an appointment is registered as a ‘did not attend’. This includes whether appointments have been missed specifically because a letter has not been received by the patient.
The Government’s focus on shifting from ‘analogue to digital’ will streamline information and communication processes, including by improving the NHS App. This will make it easier and quicker for patients to access information about their appointments, to cancel and reschedule appointments, and to receive correspondence on NHS test results.
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