Patients who repeatedly fail to turn up for appointments with hospital consultants risk being referred back to their GP.

Health Minister David Ashford said a policy on patients who have been classed as DNA (did not attend), was due to be ratified by the end of next month. It was actually drawn up in 2016, but ratification had been delayed due to personnel changes.

’The urgency of the referral and whether clinical input is needed before the patient information centre team can discharge patients back to their GP is decided by the consultant,’ Mr Ashford told Tynwald on Tuesday.

’A referral back to the GP can be made, usually after a patient has DNA’d two or three times.

’Currently, patients would be offered another appointment or, for certain specialities, the healthcare professional may write to the patient and discharge them back to the GP after one or two DNAs [do not attends].’

He was responding to questions from Dr Alex Allinson (Ramsey), who highlighted instances when patients only found out about an appointment after it was due to have taken place.

Mr Ashford said he was aware of a ’couple’ of cases, similarly some occasions where patients were unable to attend due to short notice.

He added that under the new policy, where patients had been forced to re-book appointments through no fault of their own, the length of wait would be taken into account.