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Non-attendance at clinic: cycles of audit of a consultant based gastroenterology outpatient department

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr M C Bateson
Bishop Auckland General Hospital, Co Durham DL14 6AD, UK; malcolm.bateson{at}smtp.sdhc-tr.northy.nhs.uk

Attempts were made to reduce defaulting rates for new appointments to see a consultant in a general medical and gastroenterology clinic. Despite optimising the operation of the clinic, the non-attendance rate remained unsatisfactory, and comparable to the average for the NHS. There were short term improvements in defaulting rates, which appeared to result from extraneous factors such as a general election and moving to new buildings. Though efforts to improve attendance rates seem appropriate to conserve resources, no definite recommendations can be made on the results of this study.

Keywords: non-attendance; defaulting rates