Just under 60,000 GP appointments have been missed in the last five years, costing the health service around £2.8m.

Figures have been released following a question from Douglas North MHK David Ashford, himself a former health minister.

The Department of Health and Social Care said that in 2022 alone, there is an average of 1,200 a month being missed.

These missed appointments are despite the reminder system EMIS automatically sending reminders to patients via text.

The average cost per month for these missed appointments in 2022 is £47,000 a month. By expanding this average to five years, missed appointments have cost up to £2,820,000.

Minister Lawrie Hooper said that the primary care service is working with Manx Care communications to publicise the data on a monthly basis to highlight the issue to the public.

He added: ‘Additionally, GP practices have their own practice policy regarding DNAs (did not attends), for example, if a patient DNAs more than three times, the practice will write to that patient directly.

‘Missed appointments contribute to the unavailability of urgent and routine appointments for patients and in real terms the number of DNAs seen in recent months would accommodate an additional 60 patients per day, which could provide more than two additional GPs operating a morning and afternoon clinic per day.’

In terms of the number of missed appointments the Ramsey practice has consistently had the worst record. Between April and July this year, there were 1,632 missed appointments, with 4,870 across all of the island’s surgeries.