A DOCTOR's surgery has revealed the number of hours wasted by people who fail to turn up to appointments. 

Market Street Medical Practice in Dalton says that 75 appointments were missed in January. This equates to 17 hours of appointment time being wasted due to non-attendance.

The surgery made the announcement on its Facebook page to raise awareness of patients to cancel their appointments if not able to attend.

A post on the Market Street Medical Practice page read: "During the month of January 75 appointments were booked but not attended, this equates to 17 hours of clinical time with our GP’s, nurses, HCA’s and physios.

"11 of these appointments were booked as same day urgent face to face appointments and then not attended.

"This is as frustrating for clinicians and staff as it is for other patients in need of appointments.

"If you cannot attend an appointment, then please let the surgery know so it can be offered to someone else."

In Decemeber last year Market Street Medical Practice said that 33 hours of appointment time was wasted due to non-attendance in the month of November.

In 2019, the NHS reported that more than 15 million general practice appointments were wasted each year because patients did not turn up and failed to warn surgeries that they would not be attending.

It stated that around 307 million sessions are scheduled with GPs, nurses, therapists and other practice staff every year, and one in twenty are missed without enough notice to invite other patients, which works out as around 15.4 million missed slots.

Of these, around 7.2 million are with busy family doctors, which adds up to more than 1.2 million GP hours wasted each year – the equivalent of over 600 GPs working full-time for a year.

This publication has contacted the Medical Practice, which refused to comment any further.