19 million doctor's appointments up for grabs

That’s the number that are missed every year. Each time a patient fails to show up it wastes a healthcare professional’s time, it costs the NHS money – an estimated £950 million each year – and it delays access to healthcare for other people. We worked with Pfizer to try and change this, using behavioural research to identify four themes to investigate further. From the use of behavioural techniques to encourage attendance in primary care and the optimisation of appointment reminders in secondary care, to looking at how we can overcome the high levels of DNAs (did not attends) for outpatient appointments at hospices and the general public’s reluctance to attend screening appointments, the aim is to test practical approaches that we hope will make a real difference.