Call for action as 800,000 hospital appointments missed in one year The number of skipped hospital appointments has increased by thousands in a year. NHS boards in Scotland report that 771,421 appointments were missed in 2012-13, up 24,729 on the previous year. The problem costs the health service millions of pounds every year, according to the Scottish Liberal Democrats who obtained the figures. The party's health spokesman, Jim Hume, said: "Obviously there are any number of reasons why a patient might miss a hospital appointment but these figures are deeply concerning. The fact that so many people are missing scheduled appointments not only costs us millions of pounds every year but could also have serious health consequences for some patients. In many parts of the UK we have seen health boards and NHS trusts use new technology to increase the chance of patients attending hospitals and make it easier for them to cancel appointments when they need to. This minimises disruption for clinical staff, ensuring that doctors and nurses are spending as much time as possible with patients instead of kicking their heels waiting for people to turn up. This is something that we need to encourage across Scotland and I hope that ministers are looking closely at how we can work with the NHS to turn this situation around. The largest increase was in Lanarkshire where missed appointments increased by 11,426 to 107,909. In Tayside, the figure increased by 7,637 to 131,831. Of the 14 boards, ten report increased figures. The four where the numbers dropped are Borders, Grampian, Greater Glasgow and Clyde, and Western Isles. A Scottish Government spokesman said: "It is for individual health boards to decide how to tackle this issue, but all health boards are working to provide and optimise use of reminder services including use of text and phone reminders. Health boards are also working to give patients more choice over the time of an appointment to help reduce the number of appointments that are missed.