A pilot project designed to cut the number of patients who fail to attend appointments at Airedale Hospital has been hailed a success.

The do-not-attend scheme is to be adopted by Airedale NHS Trust after the six month trial, which involved contacting thousands of out-patients.

It means doctors are able to see marginally more out-patients.

Last October trust bosses employed two extra clerks whose responsibility was to double check by telephone that patients were to attend.

Since then, about 13,500 calls have been made and 58 per cent of them made contact with the patient.

"We were able to confirm that they were planning to attend the clinic or to make another date," said planning manager, John Sutcliffe.

"A mark of its success is that because we were able to get confirmation that people were not going to turn up for their appointment we could offer that slot to somebody else. Before this system, if people didn't keep to their appointment, there was a gap on the list for that day," said Mr Sutcliffe.

He said of the 42 per cent of people who they were unable to contact, he believed the majority kept to their appointment.

"There is still a small minority who are not keeping their appointments but they are not as many as they were," he added.

He stressed that all correspondence from the hospital and from GPs stressed the need to keep to the appointment and urged people to notify the hospital if they were unable to.

Cathie Stokes, deputy chief officer of Airedale Community Health Council said: "We were very keen to see this initiative take place and are pleased to see it has been relatively successful."

Anything that made sure consultants time was taken up profitably and not wasted was well worth the extra cost of making the calls, she added.

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