Almost 350 patients do not turn up for a hospital appointment in NI every day

The Northern Ireland inpatient, day case and outpatient hospital statistics for the 2019/20 financial year have revealed that a total of 127,240 outpatient appointments were missed during the period.

This includes 35,218 new appointments and 92,022 review appointments and amounts to just over 348 missed appointments every day.

The total is 0.7% more than the number for the previous year, when it was 126,326.

The South Eastern HSC Trust had the highest did not attend rate (9.6%), whilst Northern HSC Trust had the lowest rate (6.5%).

The Programme of Care with the highest did not attend rate was mental health (13.8%). Maternity and child health had the lowest rate (5.0%).

A total of 182,807 outpatient appointments were cancelled by the patient during 2019/20, (57,265 new appointments and 125,542 review appointments), which was 4% less than the number of CNAs in 2018/19 (190,353).

Unlike appointments where a patient does not attend, which results in a loss of productivity for the hospital, when a patient cancels an appointment, this allows the hospital sufficient time to utilise the scheduled appointment slot, as another patient is able to be booked into that appointment slot.

The report also revealed:

* During 2019/20 there were 597,380 inpatient and day case admissions to hospital in Northern Ireland. This was a decrease of 2.5% (14,714) on the number of admissions during 2018/19 and a decrease of 2.4% (14,456) on the number admitted during 2015/16.

* Of the 597,380 admissions, 48.9% (292,086) were inpatient admissions and 51.1% (305,294) were day cases.

* The day case rate for Acute services has increased from 79.1% in 2015/16 to 81.8% in 2019/20. The greatest increase occurred between 2017/18 and 2018/19 when the day case rate increased from 80.3% to 81.4%.

* Between 2015/16 and 2019/20, the average number of available beds decreased by 1.8% (107.4) from 5,887.2 to 5,779.8.

* The greatest decrease in average available beds was evident in the Learning Disability programme of care, falling by 18.3 (17.1%) beds from 106.8 in 2018/19 to 88.5 in 2019/20.

* Occupancy rate in hospitals was 83.6% during 2019/20; this was a decrease from 83.7% in 2015/16, and an increase from 83.5% in 2018/19.

* Average length of stay in hospitals has remained stable at 6.0 days in 2019/20.

* In 2019/20, there were 110,605 theatre cases across all HSC Trust hospitals in Northern Ireland; this was a decrease of 7.8% (9,402) compared with 120,007 theatre cases in 2018/19.

* The total number of births in hospital in Northern Ireland decreased by 540 (2.3%) from 23,055 births in 2018/19 to 22,515 hospital births in 2019/20.