Nearly 1 in 4 people have missed
an NHS appointment because they forgot or arrived too late,
according to a new survey.
The NHS has launched a new campaign
urging people to turn on ‘push alerts' from the NHS App so they
get reminders about appointments and can rearrange any
they can't make, helping to free up millions of
appointments for others.
The survey of patients across
England found that 12 per cent said they had forgotten about an
appointment in the past, and 11 per cent had arrived too
late.
The latest appointment statistics also
show that patients did not attend 16 million GP appointments in
2025, with no shows for 1 in 23 appointments (4.3%) – the
equivalent of an entire day of missed appointments at every GP
practice in England each month.
The figures also reveal that the NHS
arranged 376 million appointments at GP practices in 2025 – 8.4
million more (2.3%) than in 2024.
The new ‘Tap the NHS App'
campaign is highlighting the benefits of enabling
notifications, with adverts appearing on pharmacy bags,
radio channels and social
media.
Users are also being encouraged to
cancel or rearrange their appointments through the app and to use
it to request repeat prescriptions instead of having to visit
their GP practice.
Last year, the NHS rolled out a new
Amazon-style prescription tracking feature in the NHS App which
updates users on the progress of their prescription and when it
is ready to be collected. It is currently available at 2,000
pharmacies across England.
Dr Amanda Doyle, National
Director for Primary Care and Community Services at NHS England,
said:
“People will often have genuine
reasons for not being able to make an appointment or arriving too
late, but it's really important that they let us
know if possible so we can offer the appointment to someone
else.
“One of the easiest ways you can
reduce the risk of missing an appointment is by tapping the NHS
App to turn on notifications to get reminders, so you can cancel
or rearrange them if they need to.
“It's fantastic to see that GPs
provided more than 8 million extra appointments for
their patients in 2025, and I hope this new campaign will help
increase that number even more in
2026.
“I'd encourage all NHS App users to
make the most of what the app has to offer so they never forget
an appointment.”
Dr Zubir Ahmed,
Health Innovation Minister, said:
“In the busy lives we all lead, it can
be easy to forget an NHS appointment or need
to reorganise it at the last
minute.
“That's why I'd encourage everyone to tap
the NHS App and turn on notifications - so you can stay on top of
your appointments and let us know if you need to
reschedule.
“When you do, someone else can be seen
instead, helping us continue to cut waiting
times.”
Latest ONS figures show that people
are increasingly preferring to contact their GP online when they
have a health problem.
Three-quarters (76.8 per cent) of
adults found it easy to contact their GP practice, up from 71.6
per cent a year ago.
The NHS App has over 40 million
registered users, who are able to view their GP health
record, order repeat prescriptions and access a range of NHS
services to manage their own care.
Users can go to the settings section
in the NHS App to enable notifications and update their contact
details to make sure they receive important messages about their
healthcare.
Background
The survey on NHS appointments was of
2,000 people in England aged 16 or over, carried out
by Censuswide on behalf of NHS England.
