PATIENTS who failed to turn up for their hospital appointments cost the North-East NHS an estimated £7.8m in a single year, according to new statistics.

In a 12 month period up to September 2014 a total of 65,373 patients failed to turn up for their first hospital appointments in the region.

Even more North-East patients - 169,033 – missed follow-up appointments.

Nationally, the problem is getting worse, according to information from NHS England’s hospital activity statistics, with ‘did not attends’ increasing compared to the previous 12 months.

City Hospitals Sunderland had the highest percentage of missed appointments in the region, with 9.5 per cent failing to attend first appointments and 10.3 per cent failing to attend follow-up appointments.

The Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust recorded that 8.2 per cent of people did not attend their first appointment.

At the County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust 13,203 people missed first appointments - 7.7 per cent of the total – in the same period.

Experts have estimated that the cost of a missed appointment ranges from £100 for dermatology up to £240 for a paediatric appointment.

Measures taken by North-East hospital trusts to try to reduce the scale of the ‘did not attend’ problem include ringing patients at home to remind them, sending reminder letters and allowing patients to select appointments at a time convenient to them.

Nationally a total of 5.3m patients missed first and follow-up appointments at hospital trusts during the same period.

The number of first appointments missed by patients rose from 1.57m in the year to September 2013 to 1.62 the following year.

An NHS spokesman said: “If a patient cannot make their original appointment we urge them to inform the hospital or GP practice to reschedule. This will free up valuable time to provide treatment to other patients.”