SOME lazy and selfish patients are preventing others from getting a much needed hospital appointment.Nearly 450 appointments were lost at Ipswich Hospital in one month, because patients did not bother to turn up, it has been revealed.

SOME lazy and selfish patients are preventing others from getting a much needed hospital appointment.

Nearly 450 appointments were lost at Ipswich Hospital in one month, because patients did not bother to turn up, it has been revealed.

In November, 449 people lost out on first outpatients appointments because people who did not turn up did not bother to let the hospital know so they could give the appointment out to someone else.

Every working day that month, 22 people did not show at their outpatient clinic appointments.

The figure represents five per cent of the total amount of first appointments.

Paul Forden, chief executive of the hospital said: "This means that 449 people could have been seen quicker.

"We do appreciate that sometimes it is very difficult to keep appointments, but all it takes is one telephone call to rearrange the time.

"We can then offer the appointment to another patient who is waiting to be seen."

The total number of people waiting for outpatients appointments at the end of November was 9586, although that had dropped slightly compared to the previous month with 9773 people.

But since April, hospital figures show that there has actually been a 7.2 per cent rise with an extra 641 patients.

Everyone at the hospital is making huge efforts to bring down the waiting times for appointments in line with national targets.

At the moment the 17 week and 13 week outpatient appointment waiting times are the ones that are highest above the target and if lost appointments could be given to someone else this would help reach the targets.

Trauma clinics, Orthopaedics, Gynaecology and Oral surgery had the greatest numbers of patients waiting more than 13 weeks for an outpatient appointment.

Trauma and Orthopaedics alone accounted for 26.7 per cent of all long waiters.

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