£160m cost of missed GP appointments still not verified

Today the Mail reported that Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt was in talks with NHS England leaders on how to close a £2 billion shortfall in funding.

One money-saving idea raised in the article was that of charging patients for appointments in order to deter patients from missing them. The Mail says, as it said yesterday, that missed appointments cost the NHS £160 million a year.

It's a figure that has been widely cited. But when we looked into it yesterday, we were unable to find a good source beyond a survey of GPs that took place a decade ago. We don't know whether this survey was representative of all GPS back then. And we certainly don't know if it's representative of the situation now; it was reported at the time that the proportion of appointments missed was falling.

The government does not collect data on missed appointments.