PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
(11 December 2024)

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has made an estimate of the cost to outpatient paediatric ophthalmology of (a) cancelled appointments and (b) appointments missed because the patient did not attend in 2023-24.

Asked by:
Marsha De Cordova (Labour)

Patients awaiting outpatient care make up over 85% of the elective waiting list, which includes children. Minimising missed appointments will help us to make sure we maximise the use of clinical time and ensure that all patients can be seen sooner. This is part of delivering on our commitment that 92% of patients, including children awaiting hospital-based eyecare, return to waiting no longer than 18 weeks from Referral to Treatment.

The following table shows the recorded outcomes of outpatient paediatric ophthalmology appointments in 2023/24, for children aged zero to 18 years old:

Outcome	Appointments
Cancelled by hospital	69,335
Cancelled by patient	61,699
Did not attend	61,904
Not known/other	221
Attended	377,520

Source: Hospital Episode Statistics, NHS England.

No estimate has been made of the cost of missed appointments to outpatient paediatric ophthalmology because the Department does not hold information centrally on the extent to which outpatient clinics are overbooked based on the expectation that some appointments will be cancelled or marked as did not attend, and that clinicians may undertake other clinical work during these missed clinic appointments.

Answered by:
()

1 January 1970