MISSED appointments at Aveley Medical Centre are costing the NHS nearly £35,000 a year, GPs have revealed.

The High Street centre has published the figures to highlight the fact its patients are among the most unreliable in the whole of South Essex for keeping doctors’ appointments.

Practice manager Linda Clark said about ten of each day’s 130- odd appointments were being missed – about seven per cent – at a cost of £2,870 a month to the NHS.

The surgery has a policy of never turning patients away, and has tried a range of measures to reduce patient no-shows, including giving patients 24 hours’ notice of appointments by text.

Mrs Clark said: “It’s a nightmare.

We offer the most appointments of any local surgery, yet we are continuously shocked at what the patients expect.

“Whether it’s just they don’t want to know, or that they want something different, we don’t know. It’s incredibly frustrating when they just don’t turn up. All they need to do is pick up the phone and let us know.”

Ms Clark cited the case of a patient who recently had an MRI scan appointment and failed to turn up.

She said: “The doctor asked her if she realised how long it took to set up an MRI appointment and howmuch money it cost. She just said she had childcare issues – she didn’t even say sorry. Why didn’t she bother to ring?”

In an average month, the surgery makes about 4,000 appointments.

It estimates missed appointments are responsible for 41 hours of lost or wasted faceto- face doctor time a month – the equivalent of three weeks’ work for one part-time doctor.

A survey carried out by the Thurrock Clinical Commissioning Group earlier this year showed in March alone, nearly 3,000 GP appointments were missed across Thurrock’s 33 GP practices.