NEARLY one in four have missed an NHS appointment because they forgot or arrived too late, according to a new NHS England survey.
The survey, of 2,000 people in England aged 16 or over, found that 12% of patients across England had forgotten about an appointment in the past and 11% said they arrived too late.
GP Appointments
Patients failed to attend 16 million GP appointments in 2025, with no shows for one in 23 appointments, according to latest appointment statistics.
That is the equivalent of an entire day of missed appointments at every GP practice in England per month.
The NHS arranged 376 million GP appointments in 2025, more than 8 million more than the previous year.
Patients are increasingly preferring to contact their GP online rather than in-person, latest Office for National Statistics figures have revealed.
More than three quarters of adults found it easy to contact their GP practice, an increase of approximately 4% from one year ago.
‘Tap the NHS App’ Campaign
The NHS has launched a new campaign to combat the rate of missed appointments.
It urges people to turn on ‘push alerts’ from the NHS App so they are reminded of appointments and can easily rearrange any they cannot attend.
Campaign adverts will appear on pharmacy bags, radio channels, and social media.
Users are also being encouraged to use the app for appointment administration and repeat prescriptions, instead of visiting their GP practice.
This follows last year’s roll out of an Amazon-style prescription tracker that allows users to see the progress of their prescription and when it is available for collection.
Dr Amanda Doyle, National Director for Primary Care and Community Services at NHS England, said: “People will often have genuine reasons for not being able to make an appointment or arriving too late, but it’s really important that they let us know if possible so we can offer the appointment to someone else.
“One of the easiest ways you can reduce the risk of missing an appointment is by tapping the NHS App to turn on notifications to get reminders, so you can cancel or rearrange them if they need to.
“It’s fantastic to see that GPs provided more than 8 million extra appointments for their patients in 2025, and I hope this new campaign will help increase that number even more in 2026.”
Reference
Office for National Statistics. Experiences of GP services in England, thematic analysis: June to September 2025. 2026. Available at: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthcaresystem/articles/experiencesofgpservicesinenglandthematicanalysis/junetoseptember2025. Last accessed: 2 March 2026.
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